Newbie - advice wanted! - Aquarium Advice

sarahsunshine · 10-25-2009, 07:58 PM

Hi all,

I'm a Noob...

I usually research the heck out of stuff before I do anything, why didn't I this time?

So, I have a 10 gallon tall tank. We had a bunch of feeder fish that had been in an outdoor pond all summer and thrived. I brought them in so they wouldn't freeze, and they all went belly-up. Ooops. Some we'd had for several years and were quite large.

A week later (tank left running), we bought 4 neon tetras, 2 tiger barbs, and 2 calico goldfish...

For some reason, they did just fine, EXCEPT the barbs were picking on the calicos a little (not much really). I did a smidge of research and decided that barbs tend to school so if we had more space, we could have 5/6 barbs, and likely less trauma for the calicos. I figured if we had a bigger tank, I could get a couple more tetras too...

So we got a used 25 gallon tank off Kijiji, I washed it out with hot water in the bathtub, put it in place, put rocks on the bottom, put in our plastic plants (from the old set-up), made our small shelter/tunnel out of rocks (cleaned and used before), put in 1/2 the water from the 10 gallon, filled the rest up from the tap (checked temperature with thermometer), transferred fish, and topped up with the rest of the 10 gallon water (this was over 4 hours.

Result: tetras and barbs dead. Calicos hung on the bottom for a couple hours, seem happy since then.

So now, I realize there's a lot more to keeping fish than giving them food and water.

Can anyone guide me in how to start over with the 25 gallon tank? Our 10yo and I would like to see some tetras back, and I do like the barbs, but realize now that they may not be compatible... and it may be a while before the tank is ready for them. I just want to keep the fish we have alive (and preferably happy) until then.

I think I have to get a new filter. The filter that came with the tank is huge (for a 70 gallon tank) and I was worried that that may be a cause of our problem, so currently the 10 gallon filter is back in there.

Next, the water is a little murky...I suppose I should get a proper test kit (after reading the newbie thread), and wondering if anyone has a suggestion as to what type of filter I should get, and then how to proceed.