Home Fish Aquarium Guide

Okay – yesterday Billie was looking quite plump. Starting to look a bit squared. I really was expecting another week yet based on when she and Mickey were first together, but…. This morning we had fry. When I first got up and looked, she looked a bit thinner than yesterday. I looked and looked and finally found a little baby fry zipping around. We had either 4 or 5. Twice I thought I was able to count 5 in the tank. This evening I’ve only been able to spot 3 at a time. We do have a lot of plant cover including some floating water sprite which they’re currently hunkered down in. mom looks thinner, but…. still a bit plump. I’m suspecting there may be a few more fry to drop.

Continue Reading “Platy Fry! (Again)”

Our first fish tank. I don’t know exactly how long it’s been. It was probably around 1998 or so. Aquarium information was hard to come by online still. I remember at one point during that nightmare thinking I should get a book, but didn’t know where to start. We had always liked looking at the fish at the wal-mart in town. Years ago we looked at fish in a pet store that was in the mall in town. It was just part of our routine. One night though – they had a sale on 5 gallon tank kits. It included “everything you need” to start and was 30-40 dollars I think. We bit at the offer and took it home. It was a hex tank and just fit on our bookshelf in the hallway. It was a tight fit getting the light cover off to add water, but it was manageable. The tank has a rim around the top as well so you can’t get to the entire surface, but…. well why would we need to get at it too much?

I don’t think we got fish that night. We did get gravel though and two bright neon decorations – cave and mountain.

Continue Reading “An Aquarium Horror Story – aka our first Tank”

Can a pregnant platy really burst? Sadly, Yes.

Well for several weeks we’ve known our twin bar platy “Mrs. Fish” was pregnant. We had moved hte other fish to leave her alone in the 5 gallon thinking that after the birth she could move out and her fry could inhabit the 5 gallon until we replace it. The last week or so she’s of course gotten bigger and the last dya or two I thought it really could be any day. You hear people saying their platy is getting so big they think it could burst but you rarely see anyone saying that they really did burst. Well, this morning looking int he tank I see a bunch of eggs hanging out the side of Mrs. Fish and she is struggling to stay alive. Her lower abdomen has given way. I don’t see any fry alive at the moment. I don’t think there is anything I could have done. (I tried a water change two nights ago to see if I could induce birth, but if they’re still eggs that wouldn’t make a difference.) Very sad.

Continue Reading “Pregnant Platy Burst”

So, with the recent batch of fry it’s pushed us over the edge towards getting a new tank. I had already decided that the next setup I did would be a natural planted tank. Plastic plants just aren’t my style and the high tech approach to fertilizers and estimating which nutrients to add, co2 generators/etc.etc…. is too high maintenance for my taste. So here’s what I put together today. 10 gallon Top Fin tank and hood from petsmart. Tetra whisper 20 air pump. An old sponge filter I had laying around (not necessary, but I’m using it to help settle the cloudiness in the water. I had a huge bag of garden pro potting soil which I filtered out to use as the soil and laid down about an inch. On the edges I used the black gravel that they had at petsmart (probably topfin brand. A 100 watt topfin aquarium heater. Marineland plant/daylight bulb (10 watt)/ air check valve and an old thermometer from our other tank. We had some tubing. I also picked up an amazon sword plant, anubias, and wisteria to try out. We already had a boatload of anacharis, some java fern and lots of java moss.

Continue Reading “New 10 Gallon Walstad Natural Planted Tank setup”

This post is going to be a collection of notes and thoughts on the natural planted tanks ( or walstad natural planted tanks.) I have recently run across this approach and am really interested in giving it a try and likely will give it a try with the new 10 gallon tank. Some interesting initial notes on the concept are as follows: potting/topsoil and then gravel to hold that down. This is going to be a heavily planted tank. Cycling should not be an issue if it’s heavily planted enough. Filtration is also something that may not need to be done unless wanted for better filtering or water circulation. Lighting can be natural sunlight if situated near a window or artificial. Water changes will likely need to be infrequent. (6 months? from what I read.) Now this is appealing on several levels including the obvious lazy tank owner level…. but the concept behind it is a bit more interesting to me.

Continue Reading “A Walstad Natural Planted Tank”

The first part of this is taken from my “Why are my plants melting” post and updates…

1-7-11 – 10:30pm
Well, I was starting to vacuum the gravel and caught sight of a little white flake of food floating up towards the siphon when it suddenly darted down…. we have babies. I saw 4 at one time and then a 5th being born and there still seem to be a few to go (at least.) Snoopy, our red wag (red-orange body with black tail and fins) is giving birth. She had been a bit cranky the last week or so chasing the other two around (a bit moreso today it seemed.) She is the one I suspected was pregnant just based on her size. We added Mickey (a male) into the tank on Tuesday December 21st. Prior to that Snoopy had been a solitary female since around this time last year I believe (I’ll have to look back, but I think she may have been in there a bit longer.)

Continue Reading “Baby Platy Fry”

(sigh)… The adventures never end with your home fish aquarium do they? First you have the break in period of the tank. Cycling your fish, monitoring ammonia, nitrite and nitrates daily watching for signs that they are in danger or that the tank has cycled. At this point in time we have two platys in our tank. It’s small (5 gallons), but they do seem happy. I would like to move them up to a 10 gallon or larger tank, but at the moment that’s not going to happen. Water parameters? 0 ppm ammonia, 0ppm nitrites and 0ppm nitrates. It doesn’t matter when I test, how I test, everything is always zero. (There must be something wrong I hear you saying….) No, we have been trying to keep live plants in the aquarium and they are using up all the available nitrates. Java Moss, Java Fern and Filligree Frill were the first plants, then an amazon sword and anacharis, then I tried anacharis again. Recently I’ve added water sprite. Each time, they seem to do okay for a bit, but with the exception of the java fern and java moss (which lately is buried under algae…. everything else collapses. The anacharis just melted over several days twice, the filligree fell apart and died, so did the water sprite.

Continue Reading “Why Are all my Plants Melting?”

We’ve had our 5 gallon tank setup and running for over a year now. (14 months.) When we started this second foray into fishkeeping I had studied and learned and felt much better prepared than our shortlived first attempt. My biggest concern was the small tank and going against the recommendations of keeping Zebra Danios in such a small tank. I had picked them due to most reports indicating that they are fairly hardy and so should survive our early mistakes. I resolved to do more water testing than before and at this point it is at a point where it can run for several weeks between changes. (This is a planted tank and so our nitrate levels never seem to get that high.)

Continue Reading “Learning from Experience”

I’ve seen warnings with many fish and plants that are packaged and sold for the home aquarium. They warn about not releasing these plants or fish into the wild. Now, I can see why some people might release a certain fish into a pond because it had a good appetite for mosquitos for instance. But, wouldn’t you think you should check and see if that kind of fish is already native to your area?

Continue Reading “Responsible Fish Keeping”

With a Tropical Fish Aquarium there are few accessories as important as a heater. Of course, the filter system is the number one priority, but if you cannot maintain a good temperature you will put your fish through a fair amount of stress. Our Zebra Danio tends to like things in the 74-76 degree Fahrenheit range and each type of fish may have it’s own requirements. Be sure to research and if necessary ask for advice from your local fish store. If you have multiple species in the same tank you will want to be careful to select species that can tolerate the same range of temperatures (or at least have a good range of overlap.) The heater itself though can be tricky. If room temperature is 70 degrees vs. 65 degree room temperature you will need more power to maintain a 74-76 degree range.

Continue Reading “Choosing a Heater for your Tropical Fish Aquarium”