Fish Lovers 3.0 [new poll]

[косатка]

bettas are solitary animals by nature and both females and males usually prefer to be alone. but even if bettas were sociable, goldfish and bettas shouldn't be in the same tank since bettas are tropical and goldfish like colder water, like jadeghost said.

back when i was younger and didn't know any better, I kept a betta with some goldfish. he always hid and had to eat left over food off the gravel. I wish my parents knew better back then, i wouldn't have kept them together if i'd known. i thought the betta was okay with it and, since he was my first betta, i thought that was just the way they were. urg... why did my parents let me have fish that young!?

[Lee-Sins]

Woah hold on a second, I never meant I would keep the feeder fish. Here within the next few days he'll be getting fed to my piranha. I was cleaning out the feeder fish tank the other afternoon getting ready for a new shipment when I stuck him in with the betta so the better term for me to have said was temporary tank mate until I get the feeder fish tank up and operational which I was just finished putting back together after cleaning.

Hopefully that came out a bit clearer.

[Dakotak]

I'm finally getting around to resubmitting my member form.

Username: .Lupin. (Though I just go by Lupin, no periods.)
How many fish tanks do you have: 3. Two ten gallons, fully cycled. One twenty gallon that has been cycling for nearly a year due to repeated setbacks.
Types of fish that you have: A school of four zebra danios and four ottos, and a school of six het. rasboras.
Your fishs' names: No names. I did name my previous goldfish Jack and dwarf gourami Mr. Whiskers. Both are missed.
How long have you had fish: I have owned fish for about six years. I have only properly owned and maintained fishtanks for a little over a year though.

I do have a question for you guys. Has there ever been a period of time where you've temporarily lost interest in your tanks? If so, what revived it for you? In the past couple months, I've barely had any time to devote to my fishtanks due to college and my job. I keep up with biweekly testing and water changes in the two ten gallons, but the twenty gallon is struggling to cycle fully because of my inability to test and dose it on a regimented schedule. This is really discouraging to me, and I've lost the desire for fishkeeping that I originally had. I feel as if I don't even have time to enjoy the tanks.

Yes, I have lost interest. What got me back into it was looking at other people's tanks and saying to myself "my tank looks so much better". Or "my fish are so much healthier ". It's a bit shallow but I think its needed. I needed to feel proud of what I have done with my tank and how far my fish have grown.

Maybe look at early pictures of what your tank started out like and looking at it now. It might spark something back up.

Also deep cleans make me feel a lot better too. Idk why,but when I know every inch of the tank is nice and clean I feel better about everything.

[Guest]

edit;; omg, can i get this? i've never seen it before, it's so cool. ;w;

The only problem I see is that while guppies like relatively still waters because of their fancy tails, hillstream loaches prefer fast moving water. So the conditions are somewhat different.

[Polly44]

How many gallons is your tank?: Don't know about gallons as in UK we use Litres. But it's 28 litres, i think. I'm fairly sure it is, i just get it confused with 38 litres sometimes.

Number and Type of fish in tank: A male and female Platy, at least i think it's male and female, one is really clamped up and i can't really tell. And a male and female Swordtail.

How long has it been running?: Ummm, several months now. We got 6 fish and two shrimp originally then two fish died, so we got two more, and despite several problems with the tank being a pain to cycle they were all quite happy then after a couple of months they all got white spot and died and we accidently killed the shrimp with the medication we put in too late. xD
So we cleaned it, re-cycled it and left it for like 2 months before we got these new fish. And we got a bigger external filter as the original one seemed useless. Current fish have been in for a month? two months? They have just come off a week and a half treatment for white spot and during that all the decorations were removed as the medication we have can stain them. We did a 15% (give or take) w/c a couple of days ago and put all the decorations back in. The other three fish are happy as larry.

Did you cycle it?: Yeah, twice, lol.

If possible what are the ammonia nitrite and nitrate levels?:
Ammonia: 0 or 0.25 as it kinda looked a smidge green, but not sure if that was just me, lol.
PH: 7.5
Don't have tests for anything else.

What is the issue or question?: Noticed during the treatmemt for white spot that the female (i think) platy was being bullied by the male sword and she is now all clamped up and just hanging out at the middle/back of the tank and sometimes the top, but i think that's mainly cuz he don't notice he so much at the top. He is not bothering her too much now, as he seems to be too busy harrassing the female sword, who keeps telling him to bugger off. He does go for the other Platy too, but he is much bigger than the other platy and doesn't seem too bothered about it.

Just wondering if this is just a case of bullying or something more serious. And what i can do, if anything? (I don't think she is pregnant as she is really small and not fat at all.)

Any other information?:If you have any photos, please post them. Photos help a lot for diagnosis.
Not got photos at mo, but might be able to get some.

Thanks everyone!

[Jayfeather♥]

How many gallons is your tank?: Don't know about gallons as in UK we use Litres. But it's 28 litres.
Number and Type of fish in tank: A male and female Platy, at least i think it's male and female, one is really clamped up and i can't really tell. And a male and female Swordtail.
 How long has it been running?: Ummm, a while now. We got 6 fish originally then two died, so we got two more, and despite several problems with the tank being a pain to cycle they were all quite happy then they all got white spot and died. xD We noticed it too late.
So we cleaned it, re-cycled it and left it for like 2 months before we got these new fish. And we got a bigger external filter as the original one seemed useless. Current fish have recently just come off treatment for white spot, after like 2 weeks i think.
Did you cycle it?: Yeah, twice, lol.
If possible what are the ammonia nitrite and nitrate levels?:
Ammonia: 0 or 0.25 as it kinda looked a smidge green, but not sure if that was just me, lol.
PH: 7.5
Don't have tests forr anything else.
What is the issue or question?: Noticed during the treatmemt for white spot that the female (i think) platy was being bullied by the male sword and she is now all clamped up and just hanging out at the middle/back of the tank. He is not bothering her too much now, as he seems to be too busy harrassing the female sword, who keeps telling him to bugger off. He does go for the other Platy too, but he is much bigger than the other platy and doesn't seem too bothered about it.

Just wondering if this is just a case of bullying or something more serious. And what i can do, if anything.
Any other information?:If you have any photos, please post them. Photos help a lot for diagnosis. Not got photos at mo, but might be able to get some.

Thanks everyone!

Do you want to kill them! 60 liter minimum! Sword Tails needs 100l! and more .30l is a nano Aquarium only for nano fishes! Don't wonder if they die! Just inform about Platys and sword tails buy a bigger one! Also Platys are group fishes 6 minimum!

[Lonin]

When you say you cycled it then left it for 2 months were you still adding a source of ammonia during those 2 months or did you just leave it? If you weren't still adding ammonia up until you put fish in then your tank wasn't cycled.

Platys and Swordtails are livebearers which means the males are very 'excited' fish. Part of the problem is that you only have one of each when they really need to be in a ratio of at least 1 male to 2 or 3 females so the harassment is spread out over several fish.
Your other problem is the tank size. Swordtails need at least 75 litres, platys need around 60 litres.
You'd be better off either buying a bigger tank if you want to keep them or taking them back to the shop/rehoming them and buying fish suitable for your tank size. Since you have such a small tank that's basically a betta fish and not much else.

[Hime]

When you say you cycled it then left it for 2 months were you still adding a source of ammonia during those 2 months or did you just leave it? If you weren't still adding ammonia up until you put fish in then your tank wasn't cycled.

Platys and Swordtails are livebearers which means the males are very 'excited' fish. Part of the problem is that you only have one of each when they really need to be in a ratio of at least 1 male to 2 or 3 females so the harassment is spread out over several fish.
Your other problem is the tank size. Swordtails need at least 75 litres, platys need around 60 litres.
You'd be better off either buying a bigger tank if you want to keep them or taking them back to the shop/rehoming them and buying fish suitable for your tank size. Since you have such a small tank that's basically a betta fish and not much else.

What Lonin said, but adding also:
Swords and platies can also cross breed, so it's not really recommended to keep them together from what I've understood.
There are actually some reeeeeaaally tiny rasboras that can go into nano tanks(like they are only 1,5cm long). c: Might be few tiny tetra species as well, but rasboras I remember for sure.

[Polly44]

@ Jayfeather♥- No, would rather like them to not die. I was terribly upset when all the fish died. We were told several times by the fish store we got the tank from that this size was fine for swords and playties, but as we later realised the fish shops don't really care if you end up with a tank that is not suitable, they just care that you paid 70£ or whatever for a tank that will probably not accommodate the fish you wanted. And we simply don't have room for anything bigger or we would have got a larger one. Ah right- we presumed that because the first lot were fine (two playties, two guppies and two Swords- after the two platies died) then two platies this time would be okay. Thanks.

@ Lonin- Yeah we did. We "fed" the tank every other day. Oh right, okay. Well it's mine and my mums tank, so i'll tell her when she gets home. Thanks.

@ Hime- I know, but both the fish store and the internet (from what i have read) says that they go really well together, despite being able to crossbreed. I've never even heard of a Rasboras and i know there are tiny Tetras, but we didn't like those very much, so we chose fish we liked the look of. Thanks.

[Gryffindor's Sword]

I'm finally getting around to resubmitting my member form.

Username: .Lupin. (Though I just go by Lupin, no periods.)
How many fish tanks do you have: 3. Two ten gallons, fully cycled. One twenty gallon that has been cycling for nearly a year due to repeated setbacks.
Types of fish that you have: A school of four zebra danios and four ottos, and a school of six het. rasboras.
Your fishs' names: No names. I did name my previous goldfish Jack and dwarf gourami Mr. Whiskers. Both are missed.
How long have you had fish: I have owned fish for about six years. I have only properly owned and maintained fishtanks for a little over a year though.

I do have a question for you guys. Has there ever been a period of time where you've temporarily lost interest in your tanks? If so, what revived it for you? In the past couple months, I've barely had any time to devote to my fishtanks due to college and my job. I keep up with biweekly testing and water changes in the two ten gallons, but the twenty gallon is struggling to cycle fully because of my inability to test and dose it on a regimented schedule. This is really discouraging to me, and I've lost the desire for fishkeeping that I originally had. I feel as if I don't even have time to enjoy the tanks.

Yeah it happens to me monthly. As I breed and show guinea pigs, which is a pretty.... Interesting hobby, it puts my attempts at fish tanks to shame. You just need to find something that keeps the spark alive. For me, it was/still is....
Breeding Snails
Breeding Guppies
And Feeding Ottos!

And I turned a 10g into a pacman frog exhibit! Best descision ever! Even when I'm busy, I find time (which I'm sure you try to do) to spend with ALL of my pets. Even if it means staying up an hour or more later than I should be!

So I guess for me, what revived it is no set schedule. Every month or so I pick out a few snails I'll keep from the babies born. Doing that and then raising them up keeps the spark alive. Same with the Guppies. I pick out some babies I want to raise up, and sell the rest. Plus I enjoy feeding the otos. Hope this helps you think about it a little!