Inherited a nightmare of a tank.

[soncheebs]

Oh, and hey all! I am new to fish in general, but I work at a pet store so I guess I know a bit. Anyways we had a guy come in and give us a bunch of reptiles because he's moving out of the country...while talking to him he mentioned he had a 29 gallon (high) with filter hood and wooden stand he'd give me if I had a truck and could help him move it out. I had been saying I was gonna start fresh water tank anyways so I said sure and went and got it.

What I received was a glorified Convict breeding slum...about 60-70 Convict Cichlids, in deplorable water conditions with like one rock to hide in and a broken filter. I had our fish girl at the store clean the tank up, change the water and seperate the tinier fish into a 10 gallon set up that she gave me.

She told me even though we took like 15 out of the big tank I'm still at about % 600 over capacity. She fixed and cleaned the filter and I bought a brand new Aqueon filter good for 50 gallons to run along with it so I can push triple water. Even so she says she'll have to come over and clean/do water change every 3 days because of all the ammonia. I guess I'm lucky I have the help with the maintenence, but what I really need help with is figuring out how to sell these **** fish so I can just keep a couple and have a normal tank. Even though Half of thefish are huge around 4 inches and gorgeous I practically am going to have to adopt them out because apparently noone likes these cichlids.
Anyways that does it for my intro/rant, look forward to learning a lot from you guys on here!

 

[soncheebs]

P.s. this is literally my first tank ever lol.

 

[Scottyhorse]

I'd give them away honestly. Convicts, as you can see, breed VERY easy, and they are very common.

 

[soncheebs]

I know, I'm starting to realise that....and I don't wanna be greedy but at least for the huge ones I can't believe I can't get 4-5 bucks a pop. We sell smaller ones than what I have at my store for 14.99 and sell 2 a week easy.

 

[Scottyhorse]

Yeah, unfortunately, you can't always get what you want for them
IMO, giving them away is much better than crowding them

 

[Zactheninja]

Why not give them to the fish store?

Tell them not to order anymore for about a month and then you can get rid of some of that stock and maybe you could ask the fish store to give you some fish you want instead of payment.

 

[soncheebs]

Why not give them to the fish store?

Tell them not to order anymore for about a month and then you can get rid of some of that stock and maybe you could ask the fish store to give you some fish you want instead of payment.

They gave me an aqueon 20 filter for my smaller tank for 10 of my smaller convicts but still, they only buy about 8 each month so at this rate by the time I get rid of the lot of them they will have already bred again...I guess I could start seperating the females but theres like 25 of them and at least 10 of those are close to 4 inches at least and thats too much for my 10 gallon. And am I even correct its the ones with red bellies that are female?

 

[soncheebs]

And I cant believe how hardy these guys are, I haven't lost one yet and they were in absolutely toxic water when I got them and for the last week over a couple water changes until finally now the waters somewhat stable.