Okay I just need to vent and get some words of encouragement.
I bought my tank about eight weeks ago from Wal-Mart, set it up and five days later bought me some fishes (nearly $100 dollars Canadian). The closets lfs is in Canada. So I thought I bought two guppies, two swordtails, and a pleco. But when I noticed how annoying my mail swordtail was I thought I would get him another lady so I bought anther swordtail, a nice white one. (I had MANY of these fish when I was younger, so I was not new to fish) come to find out the swordtails are salfin black mollies and apparently they are not all that tough they have ICH. So now I have one swordtail, two mollies, now ten guppies (two adults and eight fry) and a growing pleco.
Soon I got a bad case of ICH, which I kind of expected because these are my cycling fish. I am still treating for this bad case of ICH six weeks later! My NO2 and NO3 levels are now through the roof! I learned it was not good to do too many water changes while treating ICH so I cut back on them and watched the nitrite levels rise. The fish became breathless and lethargic. I added salt and raised the temp and snunk in some very small water changes. (which I never did when I had fish before and never had any problems with them)
All looked good. It has been about four weeks and they looked better so I lowed the temp two degrees and did 50% water change and about an hour later I noticed my not pregnant guppy biting at the now swollen and redden eyes of the big baby eating swordtail. I caught her and put her into my isolation net that had currently had two day old unidentifiable fry in it, but seeing and though she was the biggest baby eater I thought screw em I already have a ton of fish and let them out. She got really worse during the night and I soon found out she may have had popeye. But also during the night to my BIG surprise she had babies! I thought I might have bought her pregnant but she did not even have a dark spot yet. And she had about 8 babies and a few eggs on the bottom of the net. There were dead babies live babies, tailless babies, eggs, and hidden babies in my breading net. So at Wal-Mart I bought a small little tank for her and moved her into it and put a small heater in it and an oxygen stone. I got a list of drugs to get and did not find them at Wal-Mart so I raced to Canada where I bought these sick fish from (these aren’t the only sick fish I got from this place) to get some meds and come to find out they don’t have what I want either. The man that speaks the best English was not there and it was sort if hard to verbalize my needs to the cute young man who never heard of popeye (In four years of French you never learn the words to describe a sick fish! And how do you say the dieses popeye in French?).
Oh Yea the babies, well I sucked out with just the tube of my fish tank vacuumed the four dead ones and some how the eggs disappeared. And the babies that did live don’t quite swim right; they kind of remind me of tadpoles. Only about two or three of them swim normally. I am thinking that they may have troubles with their swim bladders and I have no idea of what to do with them!
Now my tank is all green and the meds smell kinda funny. My NO2 and NO3 levels are now coming down and one of them is in the safe zone (this is the best thing yet). My fish is looking better. After I treated the tank I reintroduced the sick swordtail to the tank and that same nasty guppy went after her so she is again isolated in a net. I now have two isolation nets in my tank my male molly has something wrong with him but at this point I am thinking what the hell did I get myself into! I am sorry I bought fish they are really stressing me out.
Okay that is not the last of my troubles, defective babies, disgusting looking fish, crazy water levels, ICH ICH and more ICH, a horne male, trying to stop my three cats from eating the fish and drinking the water, and baby eating fish, no that was not it; my tank just started to leak! I don’t want fish anymore! My dad suggested throwing the entire tank out the window and really right now it dose not seem all that bad of an idea.
So tonight I have to run to a neighboring town and buy another tank I am going to get new rocks, I have to catch all my fish put them in baggies, drain all my water from one take to the other (because I have meds in the water I cant change till another 24 hours), reset up my entire tank, then float my fish in their baggies for a while in the new tank and I swear if anything else happens I am going to freak right out.
One more thing. About a week before I got my tank my boyfriend set his up and he has not had one single problem. His dose not leak even though it is not level and he used ammonia to cycle his tank and he is now ready to get some African chiliads to put in his tank with his spiny pleco he bought last week.
When I was younger and had fish I knew nothing about water testing and all the chemistry in fish rearing and I never had ANY problems at all NONE. ARGHH.
I bought my tank about eight weeks ago from Wal-Mart, set it up and five days later bought me some fishes (nearly $100 dollars Canadian). The closets lfs is in Canada. So I thought I bought two guppies, two swordtails, and a pleco. But when I noticed how annoying my mail swordtail was I thought I would get him another lady so I bought anther swordtail, a nice white one. (I had MANY of these fish when I was younger, so I was not new to fish) come to find out the swordtails are salfin black mollies and apparently they are not all that tough they have ICH. So now I have one swordtail, two mollies, now ten guppies (two adults and eight fry) and a growing pleco.
Soon I got a bad case of ICH, which I kind of expected because these are my cycling fish. I am still treating for this bad case of ICH six weeks later! My NO2 and NO3 levels are now through the roof! I learned it was not good to do too many water changes while treating ICH so I cut back on them and watched the nitrite levels rise. The fish became breathless and lethargic. I added salt and raised the temp and snunk in some very small water changes. (which I never did when I had fish before and never had any problems with them)
All looked good. It has been about four weeks and they looked better so I lowed the temp two degrees and did 50% water change and about an hour later I noticed my not pregnant guppy biting at the now swollen and redden eyes of the big baby eating swordtail. I caught her and put her into my isolation net that had currently had two day old unidentifiable fry in it, but seeing and though she was the biggest baby eater I thought screw em I already have a ton of fish and let them out. She got really worse during the night and I soon found out she may have had popeye. But also during the night to my BIG surprise she had babies! I thought I might have bought her pregnant but she did not even have a dark spot yet. And she had about 8 babies and a few eggs on the bottom of the net. There were dead babies live babies, tailless babies, eggs, and hidden babies in my breading net. So at Wal-Mart I bought a small little tank for her and moved her into it and put a small heater in it and an oxygen stone. I got a list of drugs to get and did not find them at Wal-Mart so I raced to Canada where I bought these sick fish from (these aren’t the only sick fish I got from this place) to get some meds and come to find out they don’t have what I want either. The man that speaks the best English was not there and it was sort if hard to verbalize my needs to the cute young man who never heard of popeye (In four years of French you never learn the words to describe a sick fish! And how do you say the dieses popeye in French?).
Oh Yea the babies, well I sucked out with just the tube of my fish tank vacuumed the four dead ones and some how the eggs disappeared. And the babies that did live don’t quite swim right; they kind of remind me of tadpoles. Only about two or three of them swim normally. I am thinking that they may have troubles with their swim bladders and I have no idea of what to do with them!
Now my tank is all green and the meds smell kinda funny. My NO2 and NO3 levels are now coming down and one of them is in the safe zone (this is the best thing yet). My fish is looking better. After I treated the tank I reintroduced the sick swordtail to the tank and that same nasty guppy went after her so she is again isolated in a net. I now have two isolation nets in my tank my male molly has something wrong with him but at this point I am thinking what the hell did I get myself into! I am sorry I bought fish they are really stressing me out.
Okay that is not the last of my troubles, defective babies, disgusting looking fish, crazy water levels, ICH ICH and more ICH, a horne male, trying to stop my three cats from eating the fish and drinking the water, and baby eating fish, no that was not it; my tank just started to leak! I don’t want fish anymore! My dad suggested throwing the entire tank out the window and really right now it dose not seem all that bad of an idea.
So tonight I have to run to a neighboring town and buy another tank I am going to get new rocks, I have to catch all my fish put them in baggies, drain all my water from one take to the other (because I have meds in the water I cant change till another 24 hours), reset up my entire tank, then float my fish in their baggies for a while in the new tank and I swear if anything else happens I am going to freak right out.
One more thing. About a week before I got my tank my boyfriend set his up and he has not had one single problem. His dose not leak even though it is not level and he used ammonia to cycle his tank and he is now ready to get some African chiliads to put in his tank with his spiny pleco he bought last week.
When I was younger and had fish I knew nothing about water testing and all the chemistry in fish rearing and I never had ANY problems at all NONE. ARGHH.
