New here, a few questions about my tank.

Naganta

Ok, so first off, I live in New Brunswick, Canada. In my city, we have a few small pet stores, and when they label fish, it is half heartedly. I currently have two 48gal tanks, a 55gal, and a bunch of smaller ones from 10gal-20gal for housing smaller ones and single small fish for display or decoration.

My fav tank is my 48gal that we use as a headboard. It is supported by cinderblocks, and is behing our bed. In this, we had a med. size green Severum, a gold Severum, 2 kribs, 6 tiger barbs, 4 giant danios, a rope fish, an EBJ (electro blue johana according to the pet store, but like I said their labelling sucks) and some others, I cannot remember. We had to change the water, so we moved the fish into several smaller tanks to hold them while we did this. That was fine. The next day, my neice came over, jumped on my bed, and threw my cat in the tank! all i hear from the living room is "swim with the fishies kitty, swim SWIM!!" so yeah, and then in trying to get the cat out, she dropped in her icecream...so I felt I had to change the water again, not knowing what could have contaminated it.

So needless to say, my tank got Ick. Well, my bf bought a new type of ick cure, and it is concentrated, unlike the stuff we normally got that was "watered down" I guess. He unfortunately did not read the dosage, and gave what he did with the old stuff. We pretty much instantly lost all our fish...except two giant danios

We are starting to build up the tank again. We have a rope fish that is about 13 inches, another green Severum (about 5 inches in length, cant wait til he gets bigger) a pleco, a blue acara, and he is picking up some more danios and a couple firemouths tonight...

We have never had a problem with agression, but I still fear it will happen. Does anyone see a problem with adding those new few?

Again, I am new to this, and have been following the instructions of my crappy local pet store....and for all I know they could be lying to me to get a sale...thanks for any advice!

Lupin

Welcome to Fishforum.com, Naganta.

Don't worry. The community will soon help and sort everything out.8) First, we'll need a photo of a plec to identify it. Chances are, just by assuming what we consider rather large supply and demand, it could be a common plec which grows to 16 inches thus overcrowding the tank. Common plecs contribute too heavy bioload by the amount of excreta they produce.

I won't comment on blue acaras but judging from some people's claims, they can be territorial. And in this case, they may give problems to the firemouths. If the firemouths breed, chances are great that the pair will wreak havoc in the tank as they try to defend their fry and territory.

When doing water changes, there is no need to remove your fish. Moving them out will further stress and eventually kill them. You might want to do water twice or thrice a week by about 30-40%. Buy API liquid test kit to monitor your ammonia, nitrites, nitrates and pH. If you detect ammonia and nitrites, do a water change immediately. Please let us know what your water parameters are right now. How long has the tank been rebuilt?

Good luck.:)

Naganta

thanks!

We decided not to get the firemouths, they were in the same tank as the blue acaras at the pet store, and after the man telling me they were fine, I later found out that the blue acara did harass the Firemouth like crazy.

We got two Kribensis and a Clown Loach. I did not want the loach, but my bf fell in love with it and said if he saw one bit of agression towards him, he would just put him in our 55gal that is pretty much empty at the moment.

That was last night, and everyone seems to be doing great. No one has really shown agression, and everyone has claimed their own spot in the tank.

oh yeah and my pleco is a run of the mill, going to get huge one. He is only 3 or 4 inches right now, and he will be going into my 150gal custom wall tank as soon as i finish siliconing it. I think the only other thing going into that will be some neons or another small schooling fish...the tank is pretty much solely for decoration, but i think some small fishies would look nice in it.
I did call the pet store this morning though to ask some questions, and he informed me that all their female kribs were about to lay eggs....so I will have to move her I think...but other than that all seems to be doing well. I already have kits to test my water, and I am at work right now so I will have to test tonight and then post the water parameters for you.

Again, if I am doing anything wrong please let me know.

Daz

Your "run of the mill" Plec will get huge.

Lupin

Your loach will not show up quite a lot at this rate. They tend to shy away instead when kept in less than 3. 3 has always been the recommended norm when keeping loaches. If you have plans to upgrade the tank to more than 75g in a few years or move the Clown Loach to a 150g, then you may be able to keep 3-5. There are smaller species available in the trade which are far better than the clown loaches.
Botia histrionica
Botia dario
Botia striata
Botia almorhae
Botia rostrata
Botia kubotai