Helpful? ABSOLUTELY !!!
Im so grateful I found you folks. And a bit embarrassed because of things I`d done and decisions I made, ultimately costly some little one`s their lives Your`s and Aiken`s passion for this is amazing. At least for now I feel out of 'PANIC" mode and can enjoy some. I`ll still test daily and alot of days I do it twice just because I want to know what its doing. Im guessing you guys get tired or repeating urselves ,but I'm going to ask the both of you, what I can do moving forward to be a champ for the hobby? By the end of my 35 yr mechanic career when folks asked questions I didn`t have answers for I`d say "I don`t know,but I promise,I do know someone that does have the answer" This forum has that feel to it. Anyway,I appreciate what Ive learned thus far and lookin forward to future.Thanks so much again
Believe me, I killed some fish along the way learning all that I know ( and I had an EXPERT as a Mentor no less.
). One of the things he told me was that " not all fish are destined to live long lives. It's genetic." What I learned from other mentors was "Sometimes, you have to make mistakes to learn and sometimes you can learn from other's mistakes and sometimes, things happen that are totally out of your control." The object is to do what you can, to the best of your abilities, to do what's best for the fish/ tank.
The hardest part of fish keeping is at the beginning. This is when most mistakes are made. You're kind of past that part and onto the "repercussions of earlier actions" part. Once you get past that and everything cleaned up, the way to success I've found is routines. A feeding, lighting and water change routine is the fastest way to success.
Doing things "willy nilly" is a fast way to forgetting to do something.
For feeding, I just posted a thread about feeding. Give it a good reading here:
How much and how often to feed my fish?
For lighting, your best friend is a timer unless you can consistently turn a light on and off at the same times. I set mine for a certain amount of hours. I don't change it for daylight light savings time or any other time changes because the fish don't look at a calendar or a clock. They only look at the amount of light and dark in a cycle.
For water changes, I prefer a "smaller amount more often" but there can be conditions ( i.e. extra high nitrates, too much additives, etc.) that require larger changes. Unfortunately, there are some species of fish that can't handle large changes in water chemistry. This is why until you know what all those species are, it's best to not do larger changes but more frequent smaller ones. (You can read about 2 people's experiences with water change amounts in this thread:
Nitrogen Control for Healthier Fish ) That said, it should be at least every week however, your water parameters will tell you if you need to do it more frequently than every 7 days. ( I had my system set up to do a 25% water change daily but that amount was at the end of 4 separate cycles in 24 hours.) If your water checks out okay for 7 days, pick a day as water change day and stick to it as much as possible. Believe it or not, the fish will get used to the routine and come to expect it. I had a couple of pairs of Angelfish that would spawn on Water Change day because they got used to doing it the day after water change day and I had changed their water change day from the day before.
A new(ish) consideration these days, unfortunately, is the use of a quarantine tank. Sadly, since most of our fish available today are farmed and come from the Far East, there have been new pathogens that have developed and new viruses that have been developed through some poorer breeding programs so to help keep your main tank as healthy as possible, you only want to put the healthiest of fish into your main tank. You can read about quarantine tanks in this thread:
Quarantine tanks and Hospital tanks, are they really different?
Once you have your routines set and your water routinely checks out okay, you don't need to test daily but you should test before doing anything ( i.e. water changes, you have sick fish, water gets cloudy, going to add new fish, etc. to make sure you are putting fish into a situation that has the highest odds of success.
) It also helps when you have a sick fish to better choose the best meds for your water parameters.
As you are finding out, keeping things alive is not the same as say, keeping a car's engine going. A particular car's engine may require a certain size wrench and it works on every similar engine. That's not always the case with living things. Sometimes things look the same but are 2 different situations. This is why you have to "diagnose" the problem. There are some good books out there ( and possibly online) that use an "If this then that" diagnostic method which can be very helpful. Then there is always asking here.
That's my take. Hope it helps.
