KelliMorton
Aquarium Advice Newbie
I am new here (I posted an introduction in the introduction section a bit ago) and we have a fairly new (about 2 weeks old) 36 gallon Aqueon Aquarium. It's mainly for educational purposes (we homeschool our special needs son) as well as for relaxation We had one several years ago and after enjoying it for many years, we took it down after my husbands Pacu's ate every other fish in the tank (thanks Walmart for the wrong information) but here we are again (there's more info in the introduction part about me and our tank etc...) anyways, the water isn't clear in this tank, and I'm wondering if that's just part of the initial setup. The tank we had before we already established when we got it (the people gave it to us completely set up with fish and plants still in it!) so I'm not sure how all this works. We set up our tank, let it run 24 hours after adding the chemicals (Start Right, Aquarium Salt, and Easy Balance) then added our 2 live plants. Called PetSmart the next day and they said it was safe to now add fish. We have river rocks, purchased at Lowes and sifted all the sand out then washed with a mild bleach solution and rinsed 5 times and dried well before we added them into the tank (per the PetSmart person's advice). So we went and bought fish. We got 2 sunburst mollies, 3 orange platys and a pleco and 2 african dwarf frogs, a male betta and a ghost cat. Came home, put the bags in the tank for 20 minutes, then netted them out of the bags and into the tank. They did great! We realized they had forgotten to give us two fish we asked for (dalmatian mollies) so we went back on Sunday to get those two. While there the girl said it was safe to add a few more as well if the others were okay, so we got 3 guppies and a blue mystery snail and a black mystery snail. She also said we needed to add another ghost cat because they preferred to be in small groups, so we got one of those. Came home, did the same with acclimating them, then turned them out. Yesterday we came home to find one of the ghost cats had died while we were away from home for a couple of days, his tail was stuck in the filter bottom. Then later in the day we found one of our frogs had died. Then this morning, the other frog got his foot stuck in the filter inlet at the bottom and when we got it loose, he died shortly after. So far, that's our only losses. The other fish seem happy. My husband got a refund for the fish, and while there the girl looked at the receipt and told us "you should NEVER add that many fish at one time!" To which he responded "the girl kept telling us we could add more!" So anyways, long story short, she checked our water and said everything was great, other than an ammonia spike, which was making our water slightly cloudy and apparently killed the fish and first frog (???). She said to do a 25% water change and add the weekly chemicals as well as another teaspoonful of aquarium salt. We decided we also needed a test kit (which they DID NOT tell us we should get, but we had with the other one), to keep check on the levels. I will post pics of the tank soon. Any advice or enlightenment for a mom who is desperately trying to not kill all our fish, and to make this as easy as possible?? (also, we're hoping to be able to have some little fish!) Kelli