A whole bunch of questions:

[Zoom]

My wife and I have recently started the hobby of Tropical fish, and soon realised the thrill that fish can provide. Now I want to make sure that I do everything right, and ensure years of successful "fishing".

I currently have
1 Angel fish
7 Pristella Tetras
4 Black widow tetras
6 Zebra Danios
& 2 Guppies (1m = 1f)

(All in a Buyo 40l tank.)

My Female guppie gave us a beautiful show of giving birth to about 12 babies... which sadly were all eaten. (There may still be 1 or 2 hiding in the plants/rocks.)

The tank has been running for just over a month. I have done water changes whenever my Nitrite or Ammonia goes too high.

My questions are:

What is the most successful way to breed the guppies?
How do I clean out the gravel of all the junk and funk? (Should I have a loach to assist in this?)
How often should I do a water change?
How much water should I change?
How often do I change the filter material, and how much of the filter material must I change?

[veegal]

Hey Zoom - welcome to TASA.

Breeding guppies - make sure you have alot of floating plants in your tank and they'll do their thing. It is usually better to have more females than males so that the male doesn't tire the female out with his constant badgering. The breeding traps have NEVER worked for me. What I usually do is I have a separate tank for the babies set up and transfer them from one tank to another (it works for me, others may have other ways of doing it) :)

Best way to clean the gravel is to syphon it when doing water changes. Having a few cories will help a little but they will not eat everything at the bottom. Only sure fire way to get rid of all the gunk is syphoning.

I do water changes once a week - approximately 20%. Remember to get your new water at around the same temp as the water in the tank. :)

[Zoom]

I gave a gravel syphon, but with the amount of (plastic)plants and rocks that I have, it's impossible to get the syphon to syphone the gravil, and by the time I have taken out 20% of the water, I have only syphoned about 1/4 of the gravel.

I bought a relatively cheap syphon from Builder's because I thought it was a good idea to have. Do you get smaller sized syphones that would syphon better?

Would I need a secondary heater to heat up the replacement water?
Do you get plastic floating plants?

[veegal]

Is there a reason you have plastic plants instead of the real deal? Live plants aid in the oxygen levels of your tank as well as aiding in the breakdown of wastes. Everyone has their own preferences though. There are pros and cons for live as well as plastic plants. :)

If I don't get through the entire tank when syphoning I just start off where I ended the previous week. The syphons do come in varying sizes - check the pet shops for sizes - they are relatively cheap and worth every cent.

I don't use a heater to heat up my replacement water - I match the water temp from the tap and then after adding the dechlorinator, let it stand for a short while.

[Zoom]

A friend of mine who advised me on setting up the tank advised me to use plastic plants as apposed to real because according to him the real ones can cloud up the water, and add a whole new chemical aspect to control.

As I have never had a tank before, or even studied one in detail, I took his advice and decided that it best to stick to the plastic until I have been successful with the water and survival of the fish.

The pet store I purchased my entire set up from advised me to take out all the decor once a month, rinse out the filter, and then churn up the gravil, this will apparently dis-lodge the waste & gunk which will be pulled up into the clean filter... and then rinse the filter again 24hrs later.

They advised that the gravil syphon is a waste of time.

Oh... a question I forgot to ask... how do you control algae? (Becoming a big problem... and when I scrubbed the rocks, it made it WORSE)

[Gert Combrink]

Zoom, like the advert: stay pure and real!
Only clean 20-30 % of your filtermaterial as you do not want to kill all the beneficial
bacteria. REAL Plans is a must for healthy fish and water. They not only aid in hiding fry, but take nutrients up and thus prevent algae-The answer to your algae question!
Try to sumilate nature as close as possible - including some algae and right down to the microscopic bacteria!
Good luck!
Gert.

Zoom, like the advert: stay pure and real!
Only clean 20-30 % of your filtermaterial as you do not want to kill all the beneficial bacteria.
REAL Plants is a must for healthy fish and water. They not only aid in hiding fry, but take nutrients up and thus prevent algae-The answer to your algae question!
Try to sumilate nature as close as possible - including some algae and right down to the microscopic bacteria!
Good luck!
Gert.

[Dolphin]

hello and welcome to TASA!

[Zoom]

Thanks Gert,

I will consider the plant life soon... anything in particular I should be looking for/at?

What is the key to healthy plants?

The tanks is pretty small, so I have to be carefull what I put in.

Thanks for the welcom Dolphin.. looking forward to getting a wealth of info online here.

[2time]

Hi and welcome Zoom. One advice i can give you is to take Veegal and Gerts advice and if you want to you could get 1 or 2 snails but they will only eat the leftover food and not the poop, but i think Veegal and Gert just answered all your questions.

[solex69]

Thanks Gert,

I will consider the plant life soon... anything in particular I should be looking for/at?

What is the key to healthy plants?

The tanks is pretty small, so I have to be carefull what I put in.

Thanks for the welcom Dolphin.. looking forward to getting a wealth of info online here.

Look for the following to get you started (google them):

Limnophila sessiliflora
Hygrophila polysperma
Najas guadalupensis
Microsorum pteropus
Echinodorus amazonicus

Throw your plastic plants away mate...get proper aquatic plants in your tank. Like Gert said, they are there to keep your water healthy

For your tank, you'll do just fine with the first 3 plants mentioned above in the tank. If you are based in CPT, gimme a shout and come get some plants from me to get you started.

Also, I would suggest you change your substrate to fine silica sand (assuming you have the old-school coarse gravel) for two reasons....A - It is much more hospitable for aquatic plants and B - It just looks better. Riversand will also do fine, but m preference is silica sand.

Cheers
Dale

[Zoom]

Hi Dale,

Thanks for the advice. I am currently contacting my LPS where I get all my stuff from. Will know shortly where to get and what to do to make my tank ready for plants.

Pity I am not in the CT area, would have loved to come collect the plants, and look at your set-ups. (I'm in Jhb)

Ash

[solex69]

Cool, no problem mate

Cheers
D

[Zafgak]

There is not much I can add to Veegal and Gert and Solex - just do NOT take everything out once a month and clean. Let me explain why - When you set up a new tank the fish poop and old food decays and produces ammonia, A bacteria that naturally lives in your tank "eats" the ammonia and produces nitrites. Now ammonia and nitrites are a poison to the fish but wait - There are also natural bacteria in your tank that "eat" the nitrites and produces nitrates - nitrates are less of a poison but you still need to get rid of them. This is done with regular water changes of about 20% of your water every week.

This is known as the nitrate cycle and takes about 5 weeks to mature. Once the cycle is stable the ammonia is taken up by the bacteria, then the nitrate is taken up by the other bacteria and the nitrate are diluted and removed with water changes.

If you take everything out and clean it you will kill all those "Good" bacteria which mens the whole cycle must re-establish itself all over again - not to mention the stress caused to the fish. The siphoning is to get rid of the excess muck that collects in the gravel.

Note that the gravel and the filter is a great place for the "Good" bacteria to grow in so you definately dont want to overly disturb these things.

The filter can be cleaned by just squeezing the filter wool in the water you have just siphoned off thus keeping at least most of the "Good" bacteria.

I generally change half the filter wool and keep half to let the bacteria carry on their lives in.

Hope this helps