New fish for me, yay!

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grimlock3000

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Jun 29, 2003
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Location
maine
I went to the pet store planning to get some Neons and some type of orange colored Platys. The pet store wanted $4 each for some sickly looking Neons so that idea went out the window until I can get to another pet store this weekend. They did some some brilliantly colored Sunburst Platys though, $2 each. My wife and I decided to get two males and two females so maybe we can have some baby fish swimming around. There was also a really original looking Fancy Guppy that my wife wanted so we decided to get that too.

Like all good fish stories, the Guppy decided to make life interesting by swimming into the net about 5 seconds after the clerk started trying to catch it. This was truly a sign that this fish was meant to be! Then, as soon as the net went into the travel bag and hit the water, the Guppy jumped out of the net and back into the tank to hide :roll: 10 minutes later, the entire Guppy tank was uprooted and the Guppy was recaught.

Catching the Platys was pretty easy. The clerk just caught them one at a time and let me check their sex. Luckily the order went Female - Male - Male - Female so it was quick and painless. I had everything put in one bag since the tanks were on a shared water supply anyway and the store was past closing time.

The fish got home with no issue:

nf1.jpg


Then they went into their breeder trap (or whatever you call it):

nf2.jpg


And then finally I acclimated them into the tank. I let the temps match, then I take out some water from the trap and put in some water from the tank. I did this every 5 or 10 minutes over 2 hours for a slow acclimation to my water. I left the tank light off the whole time. The trap is on the top left with a plastic fish covering it so the Guppy does not jump out:

nf3.jpg


I am excited to see the Platys under my PC light in the morning. They looked great in the store, they should look even better with 65w of 6700K lighting over them. Hope they get along with everything in the tank. Also interesting, after being in the trap with the Platys for a couple hours, the new Guppy was following the Platys around and did not care about the other Guppies at all :)
 
My wife is anti-QT. If it was just me, I would get another 10g tank with a glass bottom and use the corner filter in my current 10g tank to keep the tank cycled. I have an extra hood and heater sitting around doing nothing as it is. I even have a bunch of plants I could put in to keep the fish busy. It would have cost me $10 for the glass tank itself and I would have been good to QT. Oh well, I can not win all the battles around the house :roll:
 
I am going to take some extra precautions and feed all the fish Pepso Food for the next few days to get rid of any potential internal parasites. Also, the way the fish were acclimated to the tank, almost none of the water from the fish place ended up in the tank. Hope it works out for me :?
 
Ahh crap, I should have got three females and one male Platy. It is amazing how quickly I can forget my own advice when standing in a pet store :( I suppose I can always stick a male in the 10g if it gets out of hand.
 
LOL Oh dear--are they at it already?!?
As for not QTing, they will probably be fine. I never QTed until I came here and then bought ill Badis badis. Also, feed them peas to help their tummies :D
 
I can not tell if the fish are at it already since the room is dark ;) I am just assuming that I did not get enough females going from reading up on livebearers. I will need to keep an eye on them for a while to see if they settle in, or if they need to be re-arranged.
 
Fish were doing good this morning, no signs of "activity" or aggression in the 30 minutes I watch them. They Platys look really good under the PC lighting and stand out in the tank. My wife is going to watch them throughout the day and check the behavior. All of the fish gobbled down the Pepso Food like it was a treat :)

Update, got an email from my wife... The existing Guppies are chasing around the new Guppy and trying to nip him :( Now I remember why I went so long without any new fish... They stress me out!!!
 
Congrats on the new fish Grimlock!! Hope the guppies settle down with out you having to go get a bunch of females for them.. haha
 
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