I have recently gotten into the fish business...With good and bad...results. I have had 2 goldfish and a betta for nearly a year now, and decided it was time for some more fishies, maybe exotic tropical ones..
Everything seemed to be all planned out...except i didnt know much about the fish i ordered @~@; housing angelfish with a large goldfish wasn't one of my brighter ideas....anyway, the two are now separated...but more and more im having trouble with fish housing and related diseases.
I recently got a 29 gal tank which I decided would be half terrarium/half aquarium...which didnt work out as well as i had planned, but once i got the truckload of gravel, it did kinda. I saw an adorable Halloween crab for sale on ebay, and bought it, and it was so pretty! I really liked it, but I had absolutely no "real" clue how to take care of a crustacean. I had never even seen one housed in an aquarium @~@; lobsters either...except in the supermarket XD so many mistakes after mistakes...it turned out to be a half baked, expensive, fishy disaster...Deaths, illnesses, filters, cycles, so much stuff.
I have small tanks.....for small fish. I observe what they say on the internet...1 fish per 10 gal of water....but i also ignore it alot of times cause i like companion fishies. I dont try and crowd 25 fish per 10 gal now....but I think crowding is a major problem now....heck, i dont even have tanks for 2 of my fish @~@ theyre just in isolated bowls...well...quarantine bowls. But I've got fishy problems all over the place.
I have a 10 gal tank I'm proud of....ive had it for nearly a year housing a fairly large shubunken and a calico fantail...but i got cocky i did...now ive got 4 baby angelfish and a catfish in there..they all seem to be having fun cleaning the tank of algae and swimming around.
Next. I have a 5 gal tank by my bed that I got about 3 weeks ago....I don't know where it is in the Nitrogen cycle.....I'm guessing Nitrate. I need new testers I do. I have had 4 small black moors in there..I call them my poopers. Thats all they do...night and day...I cut back on their feeding >.> Well, during the housing crisis, i put the calico fantail in with the poopers....I figured, they look like theyre cousins, they'll do fine. And..they did, for awhile.
Next. I have a 29 gal i bought like a week ago....never had anything that big, but how hard could it be? wrong! wrong! wrong! There was gravel everywhere, the ornaments broke, and I had the ingenous (at the time) idea to mix sand substrate with gravel. I had always steered clear of sand....thought it was only for marine fish. Anyway, 1/2 tank is sand...1/2 tank is gravel stacked up to form a nice mountain. A very difficult to sculpt mountain...I waited until everything settled before putting 5 angelfish in there with a crab on top. I thought it was a good setup. Angelfish looked fine, crab looked.....it had looked better.
*Problem #1: Crab wasn't eating. It was moving from time to time, trying to escape me, but not eating anything. I gave it everything I could think of...shrimp, flakes, pellets, wafers, worms...nothing! I kept it nice and humid in there...there were water jets and a heater...and he had places to hide, under ornaments and stuff. I may have handled him too much....i was so curious...i had never handled a crab before. Poor Sir Kibble.... RIP my friend. Sir Kibble was smart, he knew he was gonna die and tried to drown himself, he did. I caught him before he did! But he just went in a corner and starved himself to death I think.
*Problem #2: I discovered a mysterious pimple on my angelfish's head the day after I got them. I immediatley quarantined it in a small bowl, and went to look up diseases. I haven't been able to identify it, but I have heard of someone else having the same problem. So far, I've poured in a bit of melafix everyday with a 20-50% water change. He seems to be recovering.
*problem#3: Tumbles, the smallest of my moors started floating >.< I don't quite understand why....he had been doing fine for like 2 weeks...I quarantined him in a bowl too...where he sat on the bottom for a day. I read on the internet, it may be constipation..he hadn't pooped in awhile now that i noticed it. Tonight I fed him a pea, and he seems to be doing better, swimming around, all active and such. I think he wants to be put back with his friends.
*problem #4: I bought a new betta on...mm...maybe thursday..ive been to petsmart everyday last week i think. I have Lunneth, my aqua/blue betta for almost a year now in his bowl in my room, all decorated and such. He eats everything...If he were big enough, he would probably eat a fish. But anyway, Sol, as I've named him, my new orange betta isn't eating anything. He too is in a bowl with a filter and heater and little bridge to hide under. My room collects heat....the temp is always ~80 F. But he has a heater anyway, I've tried everything...even peas. He will look at them, but never go after them. I have no other choice but to wait.....I want to keep him in peace, and have as little contact/interruption as possible, but how am i going to clean the tank? Hmm.....that will probably scare him so bad. I think i will got to petsmart 2morrow and see what they fed him. Right now, he is listless...floating at the top, or hiding in the bottom wedge of the bowl...
Well, it may not be that bad....Lunneth does the same thing XD but he just swims and sits anywhere for uncalculated amounts of time, doing nothing...........................maybe ill get him a friend :3 Lunneth was a Walmart fishy...he gave me a look that said he wanted to come with me, and has been a happier fish ever since. I will increase his swimming quarters sometime in the future...but its better than a cup labeled "male betta".
*problem #5: I feel the need to tear down my well built 29 gal tank...It has some dangerous killers hiding within....I don't know what and I don't know why......because i need more testers, and the store is closed. But I will find out the reason all the bottom feeders have been dying in the tank within a day. I fear it is something sinister and microbic.....perhaps anerobic bacteria in the sand? or nitrogen on a rampage? all the free swimming fish are fine.....just the bottom feeders....I've tried 2 bichirs, and 1 pleco...all dead within 1 day. The pleco was comming apart actually....it was quite disgusting...like a shark had snacked on it or piranha. I've been thinking maybe i should get a carnivouous fish to eat all the dead ones that keep plopping up....x~x; but im going to get to the bottom of this....hopefully without anymore deaths.
That's all for now....getting tired of complaining about fish.....got stuff to do, and too stressed out worrying so much.
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