New Keeper Signing In...

Hi everyone,
I thought that as I've been lurking on this forum for a good weeks gleaning information, it's about time I made my presence known.  The name's Ken and I'm from Poole where we're lucky to have a good few pet stores and aquatic specialists.

I was involuntarily introduced to fish keeping about 2 months ago when my adult son decided he would give me his spare 12L tank for Fathers Day, complete with a "sunken tank" decoration (I'm ex-Army) and all setup with matured filter, heater, airstone, a couple of plastic plants and 6 guppies from his own tank.  Much to SWMBO's dismay I loved my present and did all I could to read up on my new pets to make sure I looked after them correctly.   


Now the sad bit of my story.   

Unfortunately 2 of the Guppies he'd given me were newly sourced (I shan't say where from) and had white spot which manifested itself during a weekend I was away.  The 4 new fish my son had kept for himself all perished but thankfully he managed to save the rest of his tank.  Things in my tank weren't so good as I found out when I got back - I had one fish left which sadly succumbed a couple of days later.  I rather suspect it didn't help that I'd dropped one of those weekend pellets into the tank the day before I left.

However, onwards...

I deep cleaned the tank and everything inside it with hot water, filter and all as I wasn't taking any chances. 
I cycled the tank from fresh (I fed the tank a clean popsock loaded with brine shrimp and flake food for the duration, adding to the concentration daily with a pinch of flake) and measured the levels daily using an API master test kit.  I eventually got the levels down to 0ppm NH3, 0ppm NO2 and 2ppm NO3 after 24 days. 
Seeing the levels stable for 3 days I then added 3 Tetras.  A few days later I added another Tetra and a few Endlers to settle the bullying!   It worked a treat and I now had a happy stable tank.

Yes, I know that's a bit much for a 12L tank but please read on - I'll be back with more later... 

Cheers,
Ken

A couple of pics of what I started with.

To continue my introduction...

After 9 days of cycling the bigger tank with the ammonia levels staying fairly constant at .25 to .5, the nitrites raising from .25 to 5 and the nitrates around 5 to 10 I decided to try some of that Tetra Safe Start.  Now I know it's somewhat frowned upon but I figured it couldn't do any harm?  Anyway, 24 hours later the ammonia and nitrites were at zero and the nitrates at 10 so something must have worked, eh?

A couple of days later with levels staying constant I moved the 4 Tetras across to their new home, now resplendent with "the tank", a large plastic rock/cave and a couple of new fake plants.  I also added 2 more Tetras after advice on here that they really needed to shoal in groups of at least 6.

I should mention that I've carried out a partial water change of around 10L once a week during the cycling and that the filter has a polyester pad sandwiched between two large foam pads.  The heater thermostat is adjusted to give a constant 25 degrees, confirmed by the thermometer.  Oh, and I'm monitoring the water conditions daily.

One very large change I did make to the setup is to remove the huge neon tube, which I found was raising the temperature to around 28/29 degrees after being on for a few hours.   
I replaced it instead with a couple of waterproof LED strips, one cool white and one warm white to give a colour balance fairly close to that of the Sun-Glo tube.  The result is fantastic - plenty of light with no extra heat.  (If you'd like pics on what I came up with just shout.)  All this was done before the Tetras were added. 

The other change was to the cabinet stand.  I figured 3 shallow drawers weren't much use, rather to have a large one and a small one.  So I ripped the innards out of the middle drawer and bolted the front to the top of the bottom drawer, giving one drawer large enough to house everything I would need.

Anyway, here's a few more pics for you...

Hi Resa, thanks for the welcome.      (And yes, I do - when she's looking.  )

Yep, I love it down here - I've lived here all my life (apart from the bits abroad with the Army) and even moved back into the exact same area when I finished my service.

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to upgrade to a bigger tank or multiples, as we're pretty short on room here.  Even though I've got my own "mancave" I can escape to, it's full of glass display cabinets for my 'lil tanks.   
I suspect the 60L is as big as things are going to get unless we win the lottery and move to a bigger place.

Anyway, continuing the story of my fishies...
One Endler unfortunately died for no apparent reason (he's the reason I'm worried about the one I mentioned in my other post as the symptoms were much the same).  He was worse though - sort of turned black on top, stopped swimming around and just sat on the floor permanently.
While he was on his last legs (fins?) I moved all the other Endlers out to the big tank to give him a bit of space and dosed the little tank with Interpet anti-fungus/finrot in the hope it might help.  Sadly not and the next day he was gone.  That was a week ago. 

So, then there were 11.   6 Tetras and 5 Endler hybrids all getting along swimmingly (groan) in their new home.  Levels have been fine throughout, steady at 0, 0, 5-10 and I've been feeding very sparingly so as not to overstress things.  The plan is to gradually introduce a few more fish, starting with 2 Oto's to help in the cleaning duties, followed a while later by some Guppies that my Son and his girlfriend are breeding from their tanks (she's got females, he's got males and they have a breeding tank).

I've also got a couple of Zebra snails and a few Trumpet ones in there.  And yes, I'll be hooking out any baby ones I see sharpish as I don't want to be overrun with them!   

The 12L has now been moved into a dark corner in the dining room and will be kept going complete with sock'o'food to feed the bacteria.   The plan is to use it for quarantine when I buy new fish and as a hospital tank.   A good thing I set it up because there's one more horror story to follow...

Sorry Resa, SWMBO called me away for chores.  She reminded me that I can sit and type on that internet thing all afternoon but the hoovering won't do itself.

Thanks for the tip on the snails.  I'll do that from now on.


OK - the horror continues...

I've got my main tank lights on a timer - 9:30 - 11:30AM and 4:00 - 10:00PM.
After that time the tank is lit with "moonlight" by a couple of those round blue led globe lights until I turn them off manually when I go to bed.

When I went to turn the leds off last night I saw one of the Tetras floating nose-up at the top of the tank.  He wasn't swimming, just drifting with the current.  An hour before that he was fine so whatever it was hit him very suddenly.

Coming back to the PC and reading up, it seemed to resemble something called Neon Tetra Disease?  I'm hoping not because that's supposed to be extremely contagious!

So I hooked him straight out into the hospital tank, dosed with anti-fungus and left him alone.  This morning he had unfortunately died.   

So now I'm down to 5 Neon Tetras and 5 Endlers which thankfully all seem to be OK apart from the recovering Endler.    I'm keeping a very close eye on things still and hoping that's the last of the horrors for now as I really want to make this work.   

I'm not introducing any more fish until I know the ones I've got are safe and steady.

Fingers crossed.
Ken


PS. Well, that's my introduction finished (finally).  Sorry it was such a long story to follow.  I'll post anything else like questions etc up in the right places from now on, honest.

Your neon - did it look like the symptoms of neon tetra disease? I ask because neons are well known for just dropping dead in new set-ups. No-one really knows why, the best that they can come up with is that neons need the presence of some micro-organisms, other than the filter bacteria, which take a few months to establish in a new tank.
The same applies to otos, especially if the tank has not grown any alage yet becasue it is too new. Otos also do better in larger groups, but the difficulty with small tanks is having enough algae to feed a shaol.


Since you have been lurking a while, have you found the Community Creator yet? It's a useful tool for stopping you overstocking the tank. Bear in mind you should not stock to the maximum allowed until the tank has been running at least 6 months.

That's one advantage for taking things slowly - it gives you chance to go to more shops and see those must-have fish you hadn't thought about before