low maintaince tank for grandmother -- help?

[Guest]

Keep the two platies and add about 3 cory catfish so she can have some bottom activity... and they will take care of the leftover flakes for her. I think with some Java Moss and maybe even one piece of floating anacharis that will be ok on her bioload.. even with the 2 snails. I agree that the pillbox will be a great way for her to feed... and remember if she fed them that day.. LOL... and about once a week you can throw a wafer in there for any bottom dwellers you decide to get (corys.. lol) If you are there about every 6 weeks be sure to do a fairly large water change... probably i would say at least 80%.

Sure you don't just wanna get her a cat??? LOL... or maybe emptying a litter box is a bit rough on the arthritis as well. anyway i think it is wonderful when the elderly have pets and kudos to you for helping your grandma.

 

[coolchinchilla]

Sure you don't just wanna get her a cat??? LOL...

My grandmother thinks a cat is too much work. After all this effort from long distance, I'm not so sure a fish tank is that much easier.

anyway i think it is wonderful when the elderly have pets and kudos to you for helping your grandma.

Thanks. 8)

 

[Guest]

i think your doing a great job with the fish tank... she may not have much longer, and to me, whatever makes her happy is worth the effort. My husbands grandma is in the CVICU right now in critical condition... and he's having a tough time with it because we hadn't visited her in a loooooooong time. Trust me it may be work now but later on you will never forget how happy that tank made her.

 

[coolchinchilla]

I'm here at my Grandmother's house so I thought I'd give an update about her tank.

I found it with about 3 gallons of water evaporated away, the water was cloudy with extra food decaying, and one snail had died. The parameters were not too terrible: nitrite="slight," nitrate = 40, GH = 300+ppm, pH=6.4 or less. (I had those test strips, so only somewhat reliable and no ammonia test in it.) I'm a bit worried about the nitrite and the very low pH. It must come out of the tap that way. I got rid of the nitrite reading with massive water changes.

I added 3 gallons of water first to bring the tank back up to 10 gallons. I deep vac-ed the gravel, removing about 6 gallons of water, refilled, then gravel-vac-ed some more removing 3 gallons more. So I removed 9 gallons and put 12 gallons in fresh. I got a bunch of gunk out of the gravel. I hope I didn't hurt the bacterial filter. Need to do better teaching Grandma about feeding. She had been putting in algae wafers 3 times a week for the snail along with the fish flakes. Glad I caught things when I did.

I put a new filter cartridge in the filter along with the old one, hopefully keeping the bacteria in there. The filter does have a biowheel so I hope that helps too.

I went to the fish store and bought grandma 3 cory catfish and about 12 strands of anachris. So her tank now has one platy and one baby platy, one ivory apple snail and one baby apple snail and 3 cory cats. She was really pleased about the plants, but she wasn't too interested in the cats. Maybe her interest will grow when the cats get more settled in the tank. The cats will help with the bottom of the tank. Besides I think corys are the neatest fish.

I hope things don't go reversed, so Grandma won't feed any at all because she was embarrassed that I had to clean it so much. :? Otherwise she does quite well. 8)

Thanks for all your suggestions everyone! I really appreciate the help.