New owner

Hello folks, delighted there are others out there to help me. Ive kept goldfish for manyyears and found it easy and little effort. Ive always wanted to upgrade to tropical fish and finally after moving into my new house I said a tropical fish tank has to be the centre point of my living room ! I bought a 85litre tank and put it through 2 or 3 weeks maturation. My local pet shop were great during this and told me exactly what I needed to do. After 2 weeks or so I added 3 mollies. (1 sailfin,1 black mollie & another white coloured mollied who is quite lively!). They settled into the tank very well alto the white fish was going abit crazy one night so a 20% water change sorted that out and he is fine ever since. After two week I added 5 cardinal tetras.(1 died 2 weeks later as it got stuck behind the filter so was good to know that water quality wasant the reason). So with 4 tetras now roaming the tank I decided to add 3 more neon tetra and it looks much more impressive now with the 7 shoaling together. Finally last week i added a male and female guppy and also a bronze catfish (for cleaning). So in total I now have 7 tetra's,3 mollies,2 guppies and a catfish. Im really enjoying keeping these fish and the tank has gotten alot of remarks from visitiors to my new home. So far so good, I was considering adding another catfish but Ive heard they tend to breed rather often so maybe not ? Can anyone advise me otherwise? The tank looks great now so I dont think Ill add any more fish for the time being as the tank all seems to be getting along very well! I feed them generally once a day however sometimes I leave it to once every 2 days. The food gets eaten quickly. Can you advise how often I should feed ?(Im afraid of overfeeding so I have the fish flake food hiden so others cant add it when Im not around !).

Thanks John,
Yes I have a male and female guppy...dont know if they will breed but Ill keep an eye out for them.Im still considering getting another Bronze catfish as you have mentioned. In terms of doing the water changes Im wondering how often I should do this. Im guessing I add some boiled water into a dish and some cold water and then test it for a temperature before adding ? In other words I cant just add 20% of cold tap water ?? Can you advise me on this.
Thanks. Ive checked alot of websites and books so I want to know what to do before jumping into anything but I think you cant beat the real life experience of others,so all views are most welcome.Thanks

Hi fishowner,

Welcome to the forum. Your fishkeeping like an old pro

On the water changes... I do 20% weekly (cause I keep dirty cichlids) some people do it fortnightly. Easy way to find out is test your water after a week if it's showing even a slightly higher reading in ammonia...etc it would be safer to do water changes weekly as it might be to polluted if left for 2 weeks.

With water temp I have a spare heater I stick into the water container until it's the same temp as tank water, treat it with dechlorinator then dump it in.

Or I would add hot water to the treated water in a container until it was at the required temp then add to the tank.
If you have a spare container filling it the night before will have the water at room temp for you (take the cold nip out of it) so less boiled is needed.

p.s. those guppies will breed.....a lot.

Hope this is of some use to you.

Thanks Zale, the male guppy is chasing the female guppy along alot in the tank,presume its no harm to the female and that she isnt stressed from the chasing.(suppose an option would be to get another female but I dont really want to add another fish to the tank and also like you say I could have lots of guppys if 2 females there!). Just another question,I was just looking at the tank now and I notice that there is a slight brown staining on one of the rocks I have added and also on the ornament I have in the tank. The water is crystal clear but the rock and indeed the pea gravel have a slight brown staining on them,presume this is normal ? (I dont have any peatbog in the tank).Can anyone advise me if this is harmless. I dont have algae on the glass or anywhere. So Im guessing this staining is harmless,its only on the rock and the pea gravel. I welcome all advise on this. Thanks again.

The brown stuff sounds like algae, harmless to the fish. You usually get in on rocks, ornaments, plastic plants, gravel & along the corners of your tank.

When your doing a water change use a gravel cleaner and a quick rub of a nail brush will clean the rocks up.

Guppies are randy little yokes but once you have a few hiding places for the female she'll be fine.