Still have questions!

[nurselady]

Hi all

I bought my tank (10) on April 14th. I was uneducated and immediately began adding fish. Lost off of them as you may well guess. My ammonia was way toxic.

Anyway here it is May 13th. My water is clear. There is no ammonia or very little (I put in some ammo chips in the filter) and My fishies are about 2 weeks old and swimming happily and are very active and rush to the top when I appear and feed them.

Load:
2 mickey mouse tail platys which I LOVE
5 small zebra danios
1 long fin tetra of some sort
1 sucker fish a.k.a. algee eater

All seem to be doing fine. I will take some water to petsmart and have them test it tomorrow.

My question/s:

1. When do I need to do a PWC since everything seems fine now?
2. When do I change my filter?
3. Do I use the same filter bag and just put in new carbon?
4. Do I need to keep putting in the ammo chips as well?

and

5. Do I have room for any more fish?????

Thanks

 

[fishfreek]

All seem to be doing fine. I will take some water to petsmart and have them test it tomorrow.

My question/s:

1. When do I need to do a PWC since everything seems fine now?
2. When do I change my filter?
3. Do I use the same filter bag and just put in new carbon?
4. Do I need to keep putting in the ammo chips as well?

and

5. Do I have room for any more fish?????

While your there get some of your own test kits for ammonia and nitrite at the very least. This way you can do your own testing and should you have a problem when petsmart is closed you can still find out what your water tests are.

My Answers:

1) You should do a PWC every few weeks. At the very least perform 20% water change once a month

2) Not sure I follow on this. Given your third question I dont know what you mean by When do I change my filter.

3) If the filter allows you to remove the carbon then I would change the carbon with water changes and simply rinse the filter bags out to help remove any detrius that might have collected.

4) Once your bio filter has caughed up with your bio load no you dont need to keep doing teh ammo chips.

5) If your tank is a 10 gal tank I would not add any more fish to what you have above. All the fish you have will grow if they are in a healthy enviorment and larger fish produce more waste. Overstocking your tank with small fish will just complicate the issues when the fish grow.

 

[ghettorigged]

Glad to see you are having more success now. Good luck with your new fish!

 

[shawmutt]

1. & 2. What I do is change 20% of the water one week, and change my filter medium the next week (I have an external power filter). This way my water and filter medium get changed every two weeks without effecting the bacteria in the tank.

3. Also got confused by this. What kind of filter do you have? As for carbon, I can't use it in my tank, since I have a black water tank. The carbon would make my beautiful tea colored water clear, and I can't have that!

4. Once the tank is established, the nitrogen cycle should naturally take care of ammonia without ammo chips.

5. Just remember the general rule of 1" (full grown size) of fish per gallon. Also remember that this is a conservative estimate, some will tell you more, some will tell you less. Perhaps this site will be helpful (or more confusing )

http://www.notcatfish.com/reference/stocking_level.htm

Your Load:

2 Platys @ 2 in. each, 4 in.
5 zebra danios @ 2 1/4in. each, 11 1/4in.
tetra @ 1 1/2in. (I'm guessing), 1 1/2in.

You already have 16 3/4 inches of fish, not counting the suckerfish--which if it is a pleco can get up to 13 inches long! I wouldn't recommend getting more fish.

 

[fishfreek]

shawmutt, we acutaly have a rather simple capacity calculator here on this site. click the calculators link to find it