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A guby aquarium for starter

12K views 115 replies 9 participants last post by  SinCrisis 
#1 · (Edited)
Hi!

I always wanted to have a fish tank and recently (2 hours ago) i got the seal of approval from my mom to let me have a fish tank (she always afraid of me not taking care of it and end up taking care of it for me, but that won't happen since i know im really serious about this). Im in college right now and this is my final week so im thinking of starting to make one like a week from now so this week, beside from study and playing WOW, imma gather information of how to make, and maintain one. I been doing a lot of research on it and i have a some questions, answers and advices are always welcome and appreciate.
For me, taking away life is a very bad thing (i never kill an ant in my life after i know things) so unless the guby died of aging, otherwise if it die, i would feel really bad and blaming myself so i need to know what the heck im doing here so any advice is deeply appreciate.

1. I planning to have a 3 - 4 gallons aquarium and my fish of choice is guby, so how many guby is a good number for the tank?
2. Algate control, how many time in a week do i need to clean the tank and what are some other method to control algate like fishes that eat algate and go together with guby?
3. The only spot in the house that i can put the tank is damn close to a heater and there is no way to change this around so is there any problem cause i know guby is sensitive to temperature and what is the right temperature for a guby tank? (if the problem is critical, then i will consider to place the tank at a different spot).
4. I need to know how test the ph in water and what is a critical ph level for guby and what is an ideal ph level for guby?
5. The place where i place the guby tank is the living room so it kinda high traffic place so will the guby gonna have a lot of stress?
6. How long is guby life expectancy?
7. How do you tell the difference between female and male guby?
8. I planning to go very far with this like to the day i died and after im good with all the basic stuff, i want to breed guby.

Thank you for reading
 
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#69 ·
I think the shrimp method or the flake food method. would work pretty good. its kinda up to you, I dont do the store ammonia thing. Im sure its probably a good way too. Ive put filter medium from my other tank in , and sometimes scoop out some gravel and add it to the cycling tank,
 
#73 ·
yeah I know Sin, I just didn't re-iderrate the point of getting all males

good luck Nelphie, everyone on here has given you some great advice....post some pictures when you can
 
#76 ·
A technique to quicken the cycling time, as mentioned earlier, is to "seed" the tank using gravel or old filter media from an already established tank. However, in my experience, the nitrite spike still happens, since the ammonia-eating bacteria multiply faster than the nitrite-eating bacteria. Also, the nitrite-eating bacteria are hindered from multiplying by ammonia. Hence the noticeable nitrite spike.

I've read from the net, (and tried it too. It works!) that once you detect a nitrite spike, you can re-seed the filter to get in more nitrite-eating bacteria. I did this by squeezing a sponge from an estabished filter over my filter media. It clouded up the water a little bit, but a small water change will do the trick. You can even wait it out and just do the partial (20-30%) water change just before adding the fish. If you're using gravel to seed, then just add a second handful of gravel in a stocking/mesh bag. It shortened my nitrite spike to two days, as compared to around 1 or 2 weeks unassisted.

good luck with your guppy tank!
 
#78 ·
unless you suspect the shrimp of having introduced some parasite into your tank, it should be ok. It'll be kinda gross but just wash your hands afterwards. I get this crazy itch and rash after i clean my filter bare handed but some soap fixes it real quick. You should be fine. How are your plants doing?
 
#79 ·
They doing great, i just bought a drift wood with a plant for 10dollars at my lfs and putted in my tank so it look kinda nice right now. I ask him how long he has that drift wood and he told me that he had tat for 6 months already so i think it safe to put in my tank.
 
#80 ·
did you take it off the shelf? A piece of driftwood can sit on a shelf for a year and will still need to be boiled before you can add it to your tank. Be aware that driftwood release "tannin" into the tank which will turn your water a light orange/tan color

was this driftwood already in an aquarium or on a shelf?
 
#82 · (Edited)
Ohk, first the plant is planted on the wood and the wood is in a tank but here is a problem i just found out, i found a baby snail in the tank and i don't know how many out there. Seriously, tell me that the snails gonna die because of the ammonia in the tank cause i don't want to have a snail out break later.

what should i do now? i removed the wood already but argggggggggggggggg!
 
#83 ·
snails are not that bad of a problem. Lupin is the snail expert on this forum. If it really becomes an issue, create a thread with snail somewhere in the title and hes bound to drop in and give you his info. I keep trumpet snails in mine to keep my flourite loose and they munch on rotting leaves and clean algae off rocks that my otos cant get to. see if you can get a picture, in all likelyhodo you got pond snails. these are a pain soemtiems because their eggs are clear. However, they can eb removed manually and they don't burrow so just get a nice bright light and go snail hunting. Wash the wood thoughly, go over all of it make sure theres no snails on it and replace it in you tank.
 
#84 ·
The snail's shell is cone and it too small for me to know what king of snail it is (even if it big enough, i proabably couldn't even tell the differences since i know nothing about snails.) XD

The drift wood is nasty, last night when i took the drift wood out, i putted it in a bowl and this morning, inside the bowl was a bunch of weird looking insect crawling all over the bowl. Seriously, it was sick. I just hope they didn't get in my tank yet. Anyway, tat is the end of drift wood for me. From now on, no more drift wood or if i going to get one, i will boiling it again and do all that required to keep it from hurting my tank.

Anyway, i did the 2nd water test today, Here is the result. Look good?

PH lvl : 8.0
Ammonia: 2.0
Nitrite .5
Nitrate 10
 
#85 ·
If it's a fishless cycle (It is, IIRC), then it's looking good. In a few days/a week, the ammonia's going to go down while the Nitrite increases. I don't usually test for Nitrate when cycling, only after adding fish.

You can "reseed" your filter when ammonia reches zero and you enter the nitrite spike. Once both ammonia and nitrite reach zero and stay there for a couple of days straight, then do a 25-30% water change and you're ready to add fish! Congrats, your tank is cycled.
 
#88 ·
what is "reseed" mean? do 25-30 water change? i though it is a 75-80% water change after the tank is cycled to keep the nitrate around 20mg/L or lower.

like insects in the water? o_O someone else put up a thread a while back about underwater insects from their plants too. Could you post some pictures? I feel like ti would be such waste to toss out a good piece of driftwood. Try and see of you can remove the plant and wash that thoroughly and boil the driftwood and then replant the plant in the driftwood. Tie it down onto the wood and it should start growing into the wood again. as for the snails, if you can see them, crush them and they will die. Snails have huge water content so they rot super fast in a tank. Right now, since they are small, their rotting bodies wont affect your water parameters by much, and since you are cycling it will probably help your tank. Just crush em whenever you see em. If they are small they wont be able to breed for a while.
It was underwater insects and i really hate ugly looking insects (had bad experiences with insects many time before XS) so i threw the wood away already and didn't bother to take napshot of wat kind of insect it was. :p

Following this thread, two observations. First the snails, if cone shaped they are probably Malaysian Livebearers, very good snails (in most aquarist's opinion). These and the common pond snail that someone mentioned in an earlier post are not problematic; they find uneaten food that even fish can't find, eat algae (limited), and the Malaysian snails burrow through the substrate keeping it healthy by eating food down there and keeping the gravel from compacting, thereby allowing water and oxygen to circulate; they are generally a sign of a healthy environment. They multiply obviously, provided food is available. Don't overfeed, keep the water clean (weekly partial water changes with light gravel vacuuming) and they shouldn't be a problem. If there are more than you want, just pick them out.

Second, the insects from the wood. About the only way this could happen would be if the wood sat on the shelf in the store and some insect made a home in it. Boiling it is water for 30 minutes should solve this, and also remove much of the tannins making it perfect for your tank.
I don't really like snail because they can hurt the plants in my tank and they can crawl out of the tank and which is really dirty so i rather not having any snail at all. ( my tank don't have a hood yet)

I got the wood out of a tank at my lfs and im pretty sure the insects are underwater insect cause they didn't crawl out of the wood until i take the wood out and put it in a dry bowl. They are white and there were smaller than a grain of rice. They didn't do good without water either, they were dead after a few hours without water.
 
#86 ·
like insects in the water? o_O someone else put up a thread a while back about underwater insects from their plants too. Could you post some pictures? I feel like ti would be such waste to toss out a good piece of driftwood. Try and see of you can remove the plant and wash that thoroughly and boil the driftwood and then replant the plant in the driftwood. Tie it down onto the wood and it should start growing into the wood again. as for the snails, if you can see them, crush them and they will die. Snails have huge water content so they rot super fast in a tank. Right now, since they are small, their rotting bodies wont affect your water parameters by much, and since you are cycling it will probably help your tank. Just crush em whenever you see em. If they are small they wont be able to breed for a while.
 
#87 ·
Following this thread, two observations. First the snails, if cone shaped they are probably Malaysian Livebearers, very good snails (in most aquarist's opinion). These and the common pond snail that someone mentioned in an earlier post are not problematic; they find uneaten food that even fish can't find, eat algae (limited), and the Malaysian snails burrow through the substrate keeping it healthy by eating food down there and keeping the gravel from compacting, thereby allowing water and oxygen to circulate; they are generally a sign of a healthy environment. They multiply obviously, provided food is available. Don't overfeed, keep the water clean (weekly partial water changes with light gravel vacuuming) and they shouldn't be a problem. If there are more than you want, just pick them out.

Second, the insects from the wood. About the only way this could happen would be if the wood sat on the shelf in the store and some insect made a home in it. Boiling it is water for 30 minutes should solve this, and also remove much of the tannins making it perfect for your tank.
 
#91 ·
i believe ramshorns are bad for your plants. I have MTS myself and they are wonderful, but a bit ugly, some have said that they are beautiful but i guess the ones i got arent. Also the only snail ive had that crawled out of a tank is an apple snail. Pond snails and other "pest" snails cant retain enough water to continually crawl across a dry surface so they dont leave the water. Ive ahd pond snails before also and they were entertaining to keep. However, once matured, i realized that they had eggs everywhere and that if i ever wanted to remove them, it was going to be a ton of work so i generally recommend others removing them unless they are sure they want them in their tank. Pond snails will nibble on soft plants but prefers dead or dying plants. If you drop anotehr shrimp into your tank when you ahve snails, theres a good chance they will be attracted to it so if you wake up and see a bunch of snails on it, just remove it and oyu would have removed a bunch of snails at once. Some people use this method as traps to control snail populations.
 
#96 ·
nephelie, You need to buy the aquarium hood because that side lamp you're using is not enough. When you get bulbs note wattage and spectrum. I have kept a group of cabomba in a 5 gallon before, and my light to gallons ratio was around 4 watts per gallon. They grow super fast and I had to trim them once every 2 weeks to keep them from growing too much. Once you get the right hood, you will need to trim them too, a 10 gallon is too shallow for these plants.
 
#98 ·
I got the watt for the light bulb, its a 24 watt light bulb so i think it should be fine with the tank. But the cabomba is not doing so good rite now. The leaves are getting brown-gray-ish and the stem is shrinking. I think it dying. T.T I wait another week and see how it goes.
 
#101 ·
beware, walmart sometimes sells seeds for aquatic plants that are bog plants and those die after 2-6 months if fully submerged. Petsmart and petco also sell plants like that too. its gets gross and mushy. Are you talking about the light bulb from that lamp? cuz thats not how wattage for your tank works... The way ur lamp is set up wont put all the wattage into ur tank. From the picture before id say u got less than .4 watts per gallon with that lamp. You will need a proper hood that dedicated most of its light to the tank.

I hate to be a pessimist and rain on your parade but its gonna take a bit more moeny and research on your part to really get your tank off the ground. how are your water parameters?
 
#103 ·
a bit longer, certainly getting there though. I believe the gouramis are hardy enough to put in if you were still getting those sparkling gouramis. They may be stressed a little but i feel like your very excited about ctually stocking your tank. One other note, i beleive gouramis, like bettas breathe air, so just an interesting fact.
 
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