Beginner - New To Fish Keeping, Would Like Some Help And Advice :)

It is very easy to over feed. I have Espei's rasboras, a closely related species to harlequins (look at slender harlequin rasboras in the fish profiles). I find mine only eat food from the water; once it has sunk to the bottom they ignore it. Make sure that all the food you give is eaten before it has chance to sink. if any does reach the bottom, use less food. And I only feed this tank once a day.
Fish need less food than you'd think. We use most of our food to make heat. Fish don't do this as they get their heat from the water. And fish can go for over a week without food (except possibly tiny baby fish which need more food)


With a couple of exceptions, freshwater fish only go together as a group when they are stressed. Happy fish spread out all over the tank. Stress can come from being new to the tank and still settling in. My rasboras huddled together until I got some floating plants because they do not like bright light overhead, another possible cause of yours swimming together. Most of the fish from the Amazon and similar habitats in Asia come from waters with overhanging trees which shade the fish from direct light. This includes all the rasboras which look similar to harlequins.

You don't need algae eaters. It is much better to discover the cause of algae and correct it. Having said that, it is virtually unknown for a tank to have no algae whatsoever; the trick is to keep it under control.

If you like otos for themselves, by all means get some, but bear in mind that they need to be in a shoal of at least 6 and a tank that can grow enough algae to feed a whole shoal.


There are no creatures which eat every type of algae; and there are some types of algae that nothing eats. One of the best algae eaters is nerite snails. They come in various sizes, and the smaller types can get into tight spaces we might miss when cleaning a tank. You can see mine in this thread, though some have died in the three years since I started the thread (one #1, #2 and #3). https://forums.thinkfish.co.uk/gallery-showcase/snail-photos/

I've just had a reply from Robert and he can't get it to work either. He doesn't know why the server won't allow photos just under the limit but says that 2000 KB or lower should work OK, so photos resized to that should attach OK.
He also gave a link to a site that can be used for resizing http://www.picresize.com/

Also worth checking the file type is one of those listed if your still struggling... I know I had a problem once with a file named *.jpeg rather than *.jpg

You should absolutely leave it alone. I've disconnected my reminder light...

Be warned though that the tank doesnt actually come with proper biological media. Only the algaway pad (which compacts quickly so flow doesn't pass through efficiently) and the carbon media. I replaced everything quite quickly to a block of plain filter sponge once I learnt about proper filtration and would recommend you do the same before too far set up.

Otherwise it is actually a very good set up!