Some Questions

well i got some wood for my tank just wanna know if its ok for the tank i think it is though, its been in a bucket for about 6 days now but i only poured hot water on it the first day i got it and left it in the water turning it over as a bit sticks out so i stick each end thats not been in water for a bit like a day or so, today i emptied the water out and put 2 kettle waters over it in the bucket now i stopped as i had to do something so i am not going to put more kettle boils over it so its filled up again,

 when is it ok to put in my tank? also when i first got it there was what looked like something white which a spider must of wrapped up so i tried getting it out with a knife but i only ended up digging it into the wood to were i cant see it but as ya can see above its been in water now for ages,

also the wood seems to have some holes in it that go deep into the wood now i am worried incase any of the fish/plecs get stuck in it and cant get out but will it still be ok putting the wood in? i have taken some pictures of the wood i will post them below

can snails cause harm to the tank if they die? as i have loads of assassins now and i may crush some tiny ones when i clean my tank


i actually got some fish on sunday havent got fish in awhile due to money etc did ask for 5 harlequins to add to my current 4 but only got 2 and only was charged for 2 i didnt know this until i got home so obviously the person mis heard me ha,

i took a note of some fish if i could have in my tank so if anyone can answer them then that will be great

buenos alres tetra
barbs ( all kind i liked a few types ) i remember seeing that they nip but just wanna ask again
red eye tetra
black phantom
siamese flying fox
maccullochs rainbow fish
glow light danios
red eye tetra
golden wonder panchax ( if i remember correctly it said these cant be kept with small fish so is that the likes of neons etc ? )

what i have in my tank is
2 bn plecs
6 harlequins
4 shrimp ( but never see 4 out at a time but i did buy 4 )
about 12 glo light tetra
about 7 neons
about 6/7 rummie noses
4 bolivian rams

when i say about its because i dont always count them and its also hard to count because of the plants and because they dont just stay still

The usual advice is to soak wood until the worst of the brown colour has come out of it. What is the water like in the bucket after it's been soaking - how brown is it?
Wood can turn the tank water brown but the fish won't mind that. It is us humans who don't like a funny coloured tank. If you put your new wood in the tank and it does turn the water brown, water changes will slowly get rid of it, or you could put carbon in your filter. If the water goes very brown you would need to change the carbon every few days as carbon gets full quickly.
Some wood is worse than others though. I have a piece of wood that was sold as mangrove root. The woman in the shop said that kind didn't need soaking, and she was right. There's never been any brown from it.

The holes - are they big enough for your bristlenoses to get stuck in? If they are, you could try using silicone sealant (aquarium stuff, or DIY sealant that says it is safe for aquariums - if it doesn't say on the tube it is not safe). But you'd have to let the wood get completely dry first and wait 48 hours for the sealant to set before getting it wet again. Or plug it with a bit of filter wool, though that might look a bit funny.

Squashed baby assassins shouldn't cause much harm. I probably squash loads of those tiny flat snails when I move anything in my tank. If the shells get broken and any fish or other snails can get to them, they quite likely just get eaten.



Your tank is 160 litres isn't it? If I've remembered right you do have room for more fish.
If you choose barbs, get some that don't nip too much. Look at something like cherry barbs or 5 band barbs. A lot of barbs grow big and wouldn't look right with your tetras; some like coolish water, and some like tiger barbs would nip your other fish.
Red eye tetra - a bit bigger than your other tetras, and can be a bit nippy
Black phantoms - should be OK. Mainly nip fish with long fins like guppies
Flying fox - one of those should be OK, but shops often label these fish wrong. There are two or three fish that look almost the same and shops mix them up. Some of the others can be aggressive so you need to look up how to tell the difference.
Maccullochs rainbows - I'd never heard of those so I had to look them up. They sound like they should be OK - if you can find them. Have you seen any in shops? If you can't find any, these rainbowfish would go nicely instead.
Glowlight danios - fine, so long as you mean these and not glofish. Glofish are genetically modified and they aren't allowed in the country (though that won't stop some shops)
Golden wonder - nice as they are, I don't think I'd risk those with the fish already in the tank.

'Apple juice' isn't too bad, some wood makes the water like black tea. If you don't mine water like apple juice you can put it in when you want, if not soak it a bit more.

Apistogrammas - in most types the yellow ones are mature females, though stressed females are greyish and they are often stressed in shops. There are some species that have yellow males - cockatoo cichlids come in a gold form and it can be hard to tell the males from the females if the males are too young for their long fins to have grown yet. And there is a yellow form of agassizzi apistos as well. These are colours that have been made by selective breeding like all the fancy colours of guppies.

With the fish you have, gouramis would be OK. Honeys, dwarfs, pearls and 3-spots would fit, although pearls and 3-spots are bigger than the other two and would take up more of your stocking allowance. 3-spots have a few different colours - gold, opaline and the greyish one with spots down the side are the ones you are most likely to see. Honeys can be kept as a male/female pair or 1 male and 2 or 3 females. All the others should have 1 male and at least 2 females as the males can pester one female to death. And only one male in a tank unless there are a lot of plants. Dwarf gouramis often have dwarf gourami disease when you buy them, though it doesn't show straight away. Dwarfs quite often die after a couple of months.
I have honey gouramis so I'm biased  .

Thinkfish does have a community creator like the old site but it is harder to find as there is no link at the top of the page. 
In the menu at the top of the page you'll see 'fish profiles'. Click on that and you'll get a page with a list of types of fish across the top. Hover over one type and click on any fish from the drop down menu. Right down at the bottom of the page, under the description of the fish, is the community creator. All you have to do is fill in your tank details in the boxes, then look for the fish you want and click 'add this fish to my tank'. To save your tank you have to register separately from the forum - and signing out of the community creator doesn't sign you out of the forum.

i ended up seeing what fish i wanted and i like the look of the rainbow fish really, the ones you suggest look nicer, but do they have to be dwarf ones? and if they dont have to be dwarfs can it be any type of rainbow fish? or if it has to be dwarf can it be any type of dwarf? also is has to be 1 male and 2/3 females yes?

and this was one of the siamese flying fox i THINK that i saw in MA http://thinkfish.dancrack.com/fishimages/2103_siamese_flying_fox.jpg

thanks, i ended up getting 2 yellow honey gouramis they are small though as they as only young, in 1 tank there seemed to be a pair one with a faint black stripe going across the body of the gourami and another one without one but a bright orange tail but they all seem to have bright orange ones anyway they were in a tank with a dead fish well it was more or less dead it was swimming upside down and had its fins eat a bit i asked will it be ok still having the fish from there and the person said yes so i trusted them but once the 2 gouarmis were in the fish the both seemed to have the black stripe going across there body so i asked him to take one out and get another from the tank next to it, but now in the tank i cant seem them fully as they near near the bottom of the tank right at the back and it seems like it doesnt have the black stripe now ? i am gonna go back down now and check to see if they are out from behind and see if i can see the black stripe on one of them

i also saw a weird looking fish today looked like a seal lol it was a dog face puffer fish marine fish never saw one before

also over the road from MA theres a show called neptune and they had the rainbows you posted there but didnt know if i could get them with gouramis on the same day and wasnt sure how many i could get, if i get them in the future which i might do how many can i get and how many males and females please?

i also got some sealant for the holes in my bogwood so i just need to stick some small wood on top of the holes to cover them or what else would you suggest to cover them ? as the holes are quite deep so i cant fill them all up with sealant

thanks again

thanks, i ended up getting some pebbles today the wood is drying so will use the sealant on the pebbles to cover the holes hopefully doesnt look stupid, my mum got back from france before and shes going to sefton meadows but i got 2 gouramis as you know few days ago and i got 2 harelquins last week aswell, so if i have enough money i may get the rainbows if that is allowed because i dont want my tank messing up, would 6 to 8 be enough room for the rainbows? they go to 6 cm its says, 8 would be too many wouldnt it? on this link you posted about the rainbows http://www.thinkfish.co.uk/fish/dwarf-rainbowfish.html i take it the back 3 are males and the others are females ? the 3 at the back have read fins and the others seem to have the orange you said also,

i am due my water change on monday i was supposed to do it wednesday but wanted to start doing it every monday instead so will be doing it tomorrow if i do get the fish am i best to wait till the tuesday? as i dont want the fish getting stressed straight away while in the tank, do the gouramis always stay at the back of the tank? they have been mostly all over the back and at the side of the tank, and i can see a faint black on 1 now and then so i guess i have a male and female which is good to know,

thanks again

tank doesnt look the best my plants just seem thrown in which is right to be honest as i have to take everything out and put my new wood in and i wanna move things around and make it look it a bit better so will be doing this tomorrow after water change and mainly wanna take everything out so  i can right down the numbers of the fish i have so i always know for sure how many fish i have, as i am not sure how many glo lights and neons i have but  the rest i do know

Hi George, busy busy day yesterday (didn't even get time to turn my laptop on) so your questions are mounting up!

The wood - you have to wait 48 hours for the silicone to cure before it is safe to put it in the tank. So if you did it Monday don't put it in the tank till at least the same time of day Wednesday.

Water change - do it before getting new fish. As you said, better not to stress new fish by doing a water change just after you get them. But it is better (in my tanks anyway) to do a water change when rearranging as even with sand I do get some muck off the bottom into the water. One thing you could do is a plain water change before getting the fish and leave the rearrange till next week when the fish will have settled in a bit.


Rainbow fish - Seriously Fish reckons a tank at least 60cm wide x 30cm front to back and min 55 litres, so they should be OK in your tank. If you are worried about using too much stocking allowance, get six. And yes, in that photo the red finned ones at the front would be males and the yellow finned ones at the back are females. But remember that in shop tanks the fish are not very happy so they are not as colourful as the photos, or as colourful as they'll be when they have settled in your tank.
I've looked at your tank in the community creator. I've put that it is 160 litres and has an external filter, and thfish are 2 bristlenoses, 8 harlequins, 12 glowlights, 7 neons, 7 rummies, 4 bolivian rams, 2 honey gouramis. Have I got those right? Then I added 6 rainbowfish. All that lot come to the tank being three quarters full. I left out the shrimp because they make hardly any extra.
I don't like going right up to totally stocked with the CC, I like to stop before it's that full, so I wouldn't get many more fish than that.

BUT........

You say some of your tetras have white on the ends of their tails and others have ragged tails. Don't get new fish till that's sorted out. It could be that they've been nipping each other, tetras decide which one is top fish by fighting and nipping. Scars in fins look light white spots inside the fin. Whitespot looks on top of the fin not inside, that's the way to tell which it is. But finrot can also have white edges where the damage is (or red or black edges).
For a day or two, watch the fish. See if the ragginess gets worse or starts to get better. If it gets worse, it's finrot. One way to treat finrot is lots of extra water changes to make sure the tank water is sparkly clean. If that still doesn't help, the best med I've found is eSHa 2000, though not many shops stock eSHa meds.

Some fish do have whitish tips to their fins, it is most common in males. And my green neons do have white in the tiny fin on their backs (it's called an adipose fin, not all fish have them). it worried me at first but they didn't die or get sick so I've realised it's just the way they are.

But you also said some fish ad ragged tails. Those are the ones to watch and see if it gets better or worse. When my male honey gourami want to breed, he chases the female and nips the end of her tail. That gets to look quite ragged but grows back in a few days. See if your fish regrow the tails before getting more fish.

If the tails are the same it's not finrot - they would have got a lot worse if it was. It's probably they've been chasing each other. Doing a couple more water changes than usual will help keep the water nice and clean. It's like with us, if we get a cut on our hands it usually heals up by itself. But if you go messing digging the garden or something, the cut can get infected. That's the only risk with nipped fins, an infection could get in if the water isn't kept clean.

I'd give the wood another soak. Yes, silicone doesn't stick to some things but I've never tried it on wood so I didn't know if it would or not. If you can push a thin pebble good and hard into the hole that would make it too small for a fish to get into.