Newbie needing food advice

[Adcoffman]

Hello everyone. I am very unexperienced when it comes to fish care. We have had our tank since February and we've had bad luck (due to ignorance, honestly). Well we've finally seem to have a good environment for the fish (2 platys, 2 Dalmatian mollies, 1 rainbow fish(lost one today), a plicostima(sp?) a yellow snail & a blue snail in a 25 gal tank. My question is, after researching I have realized that the rainbow fish we lost today was constipated & ended up with swim bladder(?). After reading about it & watching the fish's behavior I realized that I'm pretty sure we've lost a few of our fish from this. Obviously we need to change food. But what should we get? Currently we are giving what we got from pet smart. I think it nay be a store brand even. We were told that "any tropical fish flakes will be ok". This is obviously not the case! Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[pinkkky]

I use Aqueon tropical fish flakes, it has an angel fish on the front so it is for freshwater fish, a tetra mix 3 in 1 that has 3 compartments of diff. food, and frozen blood worms. I give them diff ones on diff days. the blood worms i give as a treat about once a week. I always get my stuff from petco they have a good selection. All of my tanks also have freshwater salt added to them it has helped my tanks. Do you add water conditioner to the water for your fish. The article i read on swimm bladder said to fast them for about two days to help and they may be swallowing too much air while feeding at the top. you might try a sinking food. the 3in1 food container i mentioned has sinking foods in it the vegie flakes and the granules sink pretty fast. but watch out for overfeeding them. hope your tank gets better.........on a funny not I have two mickey mouse platys and two dalmation mollys and have had two sets of babys most of which got ate by others but 1 out of one set lived and 7 out of another set. they give live birth and are some of the only ones that do. good luck with your tank.

 

[Adcoffman]

Thanks. I didn't know swallowing air could do that. We've had platys & mollies before so I did know about the live births because about 3 days after buying our 1st fish we ended up with TONS of baby mollies! Lol. No one had warned us before that tho! I really want to try to get our tank going strong soon. My husband is ready to throw in the towel on the whole tank. If it doesn't turn around soon we probably will get rid of it . I'm just now starting to enjoy it!

 

[pinkkky]

hang inthere when i started my tank i went through like 30 fish alot of money. If it was a new tank then it takes like four weeks at least to get it started. For our second freshwater tank we got a used one on craigslist. it was only cost us like a third of the price of a brand new one. But they already have fish bacteria in them. we used some of the water out of our existing tank then filled up with new water and didnt lose a single fish out of our second tank

 

[Adcoffman]

Oh I hadn't thought of it that way! I thought of buying a used tank as it could only be bad! My thoughts were in just the bad bacteria I guess. Lol this is good to know cuz as soon as we get our 25 gal 100% healthy & thriving I want to go bigger! & here I thought (in the beginning) that the 25 gal was too big!

 

[FastFly67]

I use a variety of plecocaine (found on aquabid) and bits and pellets from kensfish.com For the price of what you pay when you buy in the store, you can get MUCH better food for your fish and also support fellow hobbyist. I've been buying from kens for quite a while, he's a stand up guy and also has lots of other fish keeping products on his site for WAY less than any other place I've found and I know John (plecocaine guy) and his wife very well and they are both outstanding sellers, fish keepers and all around awesome people. Either one you go with (or both) I guarantee you won't go wrong.

 

[Adcoffman]

Hmm. Hadn't even crossed my mind to buy online. I'll be checking that out!