Introduce Yourself!

Hi everyone,
This forum has saved fish!
I'm very new to fish keeping, only about 6 weeks and through naivety and rubbish advice from the LFS on setting up a tank 7 fish died after 5 weeks!!
 That's how I found this great forum, through reading all your great advice I now have a proper water testing kit and after many 50% water changes I now have much happier fish phew 
I look forward to reading your great advice, I'm turning into a fish keeping geek
Nicky x

Welcome to the forum..... this is a good place to be!

Oooh beautiful colours tank and Barbs, well done you 

Hi all, haven't been on here for a while. Winter months are our Peak at work and I don't have much time for anything else.

My mom had fish. That was several years ago and I don't remember much about them, but for some reason I remember this giant plec she had (seemed giant when I was little). I remember being fascinated with it and watching it for hours.

Getting older and spending most of my time in the house, I mentioned to my wife I'd like to start keeping fish. Two years ago she bought me a 60 liter tank for Christmas. It was disaster after disaster. I read quite a bit about fish and tried to follow instructions but every fish I bought died within days. As it turned out the filter that came with the tank wasn't adequate. The shop she bought the tank from admitted they were getting a lot of complaints about the filter and offered to replace the fish I'd lost.

But I'd given up. It was too disheartening to wake up to a tank of dead fish over and over again.

A couple months later a friend offered me a 90 liter tank with an oversized external filter. He convinced me as long as I and add fish gradually, I wouldn't have a problem. I started with Western Rainbows and all went well, then added a golden gourami, which was a mistake. The gouami kept attacking my male rainbow and one morning I found it dead. That experience taught me to be careful of what species to mix. The same friend that gave me the tank took the gourami off me and eventually i added a small Angel and 6 albino corys.

All went well until the rainbows outgrew the tank then I started having problems.

I now have two tanks. The 90 and a 175 liter.

90 liter - 5 Platys, 4 Albino Corys. Soon to add a male and two female Dwarf gouramis.

175 liter - 8 Western Rainbows, 2 medium Angels, 2 small plecs and a recently added redtail shark.

If it wasn't from the advise I'd gotten here, I'd never had succeeded, so thank you all loads.

I still have a very low PH cause of soft water area, but as long as I keep changing 20% weekly the fish are okay with it.

Oh yeah, I also have two large Dogs. Sammy a cross between an Akita and Staffe, a big softy. And Rosie a resued ex racer Greyhound.

Happy new Year 
Thank you for making me welcome.

Here is a couple of pictures of my tank. I'm not a great picture taker, so sorry for the blurry fish and wrong lighting 
The first picture is of my set up after 4 days
The second picture is of about 70 days.
Some of the plants grow ok under my lighting and feeding conditions. Others struggle. I suppose it saves me having to trim them every week

just an update with a few pics, hope it in right place

Thanks Aquamaid, trying to find the culprit that pulling my plants up at moment and looking for second tank he he he, know which one but cant find at right price or other end of country as normally the case, am looking for another jewul but a rio 400 in black

Hi Anne, welcome 

It is an unfortunate fact of fishkeeping life that tank and filter instructions, and shops are not the  :-\best sources of information.


So now we all want to know - what tank do you have and what fish are in it 

Sounds a nice tank.
You'll find there are several species that will do well at that temperature. Fish like white cloud mountain minnows, glowlight danios etc.

Have you found the community creator on here yet? That will help you decide how many more fish would be OK in the tank.

I have had a play with the community creator and am thinking about my next additions which will be a small group of schooling fish so I will check out your suggestions.  My tank is only 60 cm so it does limit some of my choices.  Then that will be me fully stocked.

I have attached a photo it is more plants than fish but they are in there honest.