suggestions please!

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veetee

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Jun 13, 2009
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Well after carefully setting up my 20 gallon tank, filter, heater (set at 22 deg. ) and plants etc and letting it run for a couple of weeks I decided it was ok to get my first fish.
After HOURS of research on the web, I thought I would get a shoal of gold barbs, let them settle in for a couple of weeks then get a shoal of mountain minnows and finally in a month or two get a bolivian ram.

WELL! stupid me asked hubby to pick up the barbs from the shop. BIG Mistake.
He was sold golden TIGER barbs! And if that wasn't enough, came back with a silver shark because it 'was stunning'. :(:(

So bang goes my plan to have a peaceful tank and a ram.
I am now looking for suggestions, Is this enough fish for my tank (6 barbs) or would there be space for one (or a pair) of something else, perhaps a gourami??? And what would get on with my existing fish???
I don't want to introduce anything which will get bullied or eaten.

SIGH!
 
I suggest taking the silver shark back, depending no what type of shark it is it may outgrow your tank quickly. IMO, a 20 gallon tank is not enough room for barbs as they are very active fish. With that being said though, if you want to keep them, I would add 2 more to the school, then get some cories for the bottom and leave it at that.

You can always see if the store excepts returns for exchanges and take them back and get what you had intended to. However with your original plan Im pretty certan that mt minnows (white clouds) are cold water fish and would not have mixed well with the other inhabitants.
 
well the shop said they can swap the tigers for cherry barb, would this be better?? I've seen their tanks and they do have some lovely healthy looking ones in stock. They can't get gold barbs (or I think in reality are not convinced gold barbs and golden tigers are different things!)
I don't think will be able to persuade hubby to part with the shark. Actually he is rather gorgeous (shark not hubby :clown::clown:) and my brother in law has a bigger tank I think he would take him if he ever outgrew ours.

I never really wanted tigers, I'm sure they are great in the right setting, and are lovely looking fish, but I thought they might be too aggressive for my size of tank. Do you think the cherry barbs would be better?
 
YES! :) Cherry barbs are much better than tiger barbs for a peaceful setup. You can put them with just about anything with peaceful results. They are very hardy, and beautiful. I have kept them with angelfish, and discus and lemon tetras. The cherry barbs always stand out so lovely and when they are frisky they tend to swim in circles with each other, quite interesting and fun. :)
 
x2. Cherry barbs are GREAT "community" fish.
 
ok, so I now have three cherry barb males. They are doing great and are very active. They are getting on great with the shark, they follow him quite a bit but he just ignores them. I think they make him feel safe.
I plan just to leave it at this for a few weeks until I am sure they are all settled and my tank is 'safe' as it has only been set up a few weeks.
A customer at work got some about the same time as me and she got a male and female, the female was fine for the first day, she said, and the second day looked like it was going to spawn, got fatter and paler in the belly and was checking out the leaves and bases of her plants. Unfortunately the next thing she saw was it floating upside down, very bloated but still alive, gasping. It died after a couple of minutes. What could have caused this?? could it have been eggbound due to all the transporting from one tank to another?? Do you think it is anything which might affect my males as they came from the same tank at the shop??
I am really hoping not as they are doing so well, I would be gutted if I lost one now!
 
I see in the first post about "letting it run for a couple of weeks". Does that mean that it cycled? Did you use an ammonia source? If neither of you cycled the tanks you will not have good luck with the fish you put in.
 
It could have been a number of factors that caused its death the initial cycle being one of them. I wouldn't say you wont have luck with these fish.

Do you have a liquid test kit? If you do then you can test for ammonia and nitrite daily (do a water change when they are over .5 even if it is daily) and then when they are consistently at zero you can add a few more small fish. It usually takes approximately a month for the cycle to complete once an ammonia source is introduced. Stocking very slowly is the key.

You may want to read up on this thread also http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forum...-but-i-already-have-fish-what-now-116287.html
 
It could have been a number of factors that caused its death the initial cycle being one of them. I wouldn't say you wont have luck with these fish.

Do you have a liquid test kit? If you do then you can test for ammonia and nitrite daily (do a water change when they are over .5 even if it is daily) and then when they are consistently at zero you can add a few more small fish. It usually takes approximately a month for the cycle to complete once an ammonia source is introduced. Stocking very slowly is the key.

You may want to read up on this thread also http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forum...-but-i-already-have-fish-what-now-116287.html


I personally think that's a great thread. :rolleyes:
 
Running a tank empty does not cycle it. Take a look at the article given to you in this thread. You have some work ahead of you.

Good luck!
 
I dont know about my customers tank, I assumed she has had it set up for a while, but I might be wrong. All the males from this 'batch' seem to be fine so far.

My tank has been set up for about a month, I let it run for 2 1/2 weeks with filter running, a pinch of food and four large plants as well as filter start liquid on the new filter. This is what I was told to do by the shop. (of course it is always afterwards that someone tells you different!!)

I swapped the tigers for half the number of cherry's, so this should lighten the bio-load, and I have been doing 10 % water changes every other day. I also got test kits and will continue to keep checking the levels. So far I haven't lost any fish, I really hope they will be ok.
Do you think this will be enough???
 
It sounds to me like you're on the right track. The only suggestion I'd have would be to do larger water changes. If you test ammonia and nitrite and it shows really any, I'd do a 50% change. You may not need to do that though. At this point your test results will dictate the best course of action. We change 50% weekly on all our FW tanks even though they've been long established. "The solution to pollution is dilution" is one of the best coined phrase in this hobby IMO. :)

Good luck and keep us updated!
 
Ok, thanks for the advice, I will be monitoring the tank closely for a good while to give my little guys the best chance of survival.
Weird, but I am quite attached to them already.
 
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