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>==O) FISH (O==<
26 responses total.
I'm just about to embark on a new tank, so I thought I'd see what my fellow Grexers had to say about aquariums. Imagine my surprise when there wasn't an item! Now that we've got that settled, let's talk fish...
When I was younger we had an aquarium. My favorite fish was the glass cat I had- lived for quite a while. :)
I used to have two glass cats. They were pretty cool fish. I bought one, at first, but all it did was hover in the corner of the tank. After some reading, I learned glass cats were more communal, so I got another one. The results were immediate: the two coasted back and forth together.
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I've never had tanks going long enough to get tired of them, I guess. On the contrary, I found them pretty exciting studies of ecosystems. But, perhaps the fact that this is so exciting to me has more to do with the fact that I never really had much in the way of pets, as a kid.
My family got a little sick of our tank, even the cat lost interest in watching it. ;) The glass cat was just stubborn, and wouldn't die like the rest of them had. We ended up giving it away, the poor thing died three days later. :( Fish can be fun though, if you have several. Angelfish with guppies is a bad idea though... Angelfish seem to think that guppies are most tasty... ;)
Even mama and papa guppie think their babies are most tasty. The babies "swim for their lives" the instant they pop out of mama. I've had Angle- fish lay eggs, but they never hatched.
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I've had a progessive tank experience. My first successful tank was a 10-gallon, with a few angels, some neon tetras, a bronze catfish, and some red swordtails. But the swordtails were a little aggressive, and, after one ate the others, it went after the angelfish. I ended up selling the red sword back to the pet shop, and made some money on it, as it was somewhat bigger, by then. I'm not sure that covered the cost of its diet, however... I had some real survival problems, at first, which I finally attributed to a lack of stable tank temperature. That was mainly due to large daily temperature fluctuations int he tank's room, and a heater not powerful enough to respond to those fluctuations quickly enough. It was also partially due to the difficulty of maintaining a very small tank, where the environment is too sensitive to changes. I took some notes, picked up some good books, and hung out at the pet store from time to time to pick up tips. Ran across a great book called _Confessions of a Fish Doctor_, too, about the adventures of a housecalling fish doctor in New York. It was really informative and fun to read. Doesn't appear to be in print, however, anymore, so it's not easy to find. But I moved away, and left the tank behind, and then it wasn't until several years later that I decided to try again...
My biggest problem has been water. Living in the city of Ann Arbor, I have to treat my water with chemicals to remove chlorine and, not too long ago, ammonia. Called Chlorimine or some-such. Ann Arbor now uses ozone to disinfect water and a small ammount of chlorine to keep it disinfected in the pipes as it travels around under the city. I have killed more than one fish by subjecting it to misstreated city water. (And we drink this stuff??) My best tank was a small 5 gallon tank set in a north facing window. I place a couple of Guppies in it along with some algae. It bloomed! Within a few months it was stuffed with algae and hundreds of guppies. After a few years I had several generations of Guppies all in the same tank. It was interesting to see nothing fancy Guppie parents and fancy Guppie babies. Interbreeding? My largest tank is one that I built: 170 gallons. It's a cool tank but *very* expensive to heat. Hence it has collected domestic fish that do well in our climate. Nothing in it at the moment: City water did in the last couple of residents. I cant wait to get on well water so I can reduce the water problem. A 170 gallon tank takes a lot of make-up water.
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We have kept aquaria over the years. Currently we have two silver dollars and one tetra in a 5 gallon tank. It is heated and filtered. It was the silver dollars and three tetras for the past couple of years, but the tetras have recently started to disappear at one a month. We have had the usual assortment of startup problems - mostly disease. We use only distilled water for make up, to avoid salt accumulation (and having to treat city water). The most recent disease was ulcers on one of the silver dollars. After much thought and reading, I replenished the start-up minerals I add (magnesium, potassium, sodium, chloride, sulfate), and the ulcer healed and disappeared. Plants (including algae) consume minerals, I figured, so they got too low.
Interesting. Most of the books I read recommended that 1/3 to 1/2 of the aquarium's water be replace every couple of months. Perhaps to keep the required minerals in the water. I don't think I, or most other fish keepers, would be up to the task of replenishing minerals or even knowing which ones need replenishing. My old 5 gallon tank now house Goldie, my sons once feeder goldfish ;-)
Certainly if you use tap water for replenishment, you have to exchange water to keep mineral concentration from building up. I do know that plants remove some minerals, (certainly Mg and K) so if you are cleaning algae off the glass and cleaning your filter, you are depleting minerals. Unless you are equipped for analysis, however, you can not know what you have, and few sources say what you need. I have a "start up" formuila for a tropical fish tank, but no info on maintenance. I just tried it, and it was amazing how quickly the ulcer disappeared. I would guess K was the depleted nutrient - but, who knows?
For my large tank, I use to "age" 30 gallons of city water at a time to get rid of the chemicals they added. I successfully used this method to age even chlorimined water, though I was told that only chemical neutralizers would be effective. It took two to three weeks to age the water, with an airstone going to circulate the water, but it DID work. I tested the water, before and after, to verify this. I was soon able to tell if the water was aged simply by smelling the gas coming off the surface of the water: No more chemical odder indicated that the water was ready to use. I never had problems when I used this method. My last loss of fish was due to my reading in the paper that the water department was adding only chlorine to the water supply. So, I only treated for chlorine and didn't test it before adding it to the tank. Big mistake! I suspect that the city was having a few start-up glitches with their (very complex) ozone treatment process so not all their water was ammonia free.
It's entirely possible that your 1 gallon tank was simply too small for two goldfish, actually. Each fish requires a certain amount of water and water surface area to survive. Goldfish usually double the standard requirements because of their metabolism.
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They did tell me at the pet store that Ann Arbor city water was especially difficult for tanks. I imagine that's true of most city water. Sounds like you had a good fish bowl, at least. One that allows a lot of water surface area is great.
My sons goldfish swims in rain water we collect. It seems quite happy in it.
I just stopped in to the Fish Doctors, on Washtenaw, right next to Putt-Putt Golf, on the way back from the Grex walk lunch, and I was extremely impressed. The staff was very friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable. They stock an excellent selection of live plants, something that's pretty hard to find. Their freshwater fish selection looked nice, as well. Having visited numerous stores in the area in the past few months as I set up my new tank, I would have to say this one wins, hands-down, on combination of service, stock, and professionalism. I'll include a list of the local places I've visited and my comments in a following message...
LOCAL AQUARIUM SHOP REVIEW ======================================================================== ANN ARBOR PET SUPPLY MO-FR 10A-9P 1200 Packard SA 9A-6P Ann Arbor, MI 48104 SU 12P-5P (313) 761-4785 COMMENTS: Convenient campus location. Good service. Average fish selection. Good plant selection. Limited supply selection. I was helped the moment I walked into this store, and they knew their stuff. One of my top choices. ________________________________________________________________________ AQUA-TEC 1818 Packard Ann Arbor, MI 48104 (313) 769-8221 COMMENTS: Almost convenient campus location. Good service, excellent fish selection, good plant selection, good supply selection. Friendly, knowledgeable, well-stocked. My second choice. ________________________________________________________________________ FISH DOCTORS MO-FR 11A-9P 2703 Washtenaw SA 11A-6P Ypsilanti, MI 48197 SU 12P-5P (313) 434-1030 COMMENTS: Well-situated in the Washtenaw plaza strip, near Putt-Putt Golf. Superior service. Extremely knowledgeable and helpful staff. Fantastic fish selection. Excellent live plant selection. Good supply selection. This store wins, hands-down, on best combination of service, selection, and professionalism. ________________________________________________________________________ HURON PET SUPPLY MO-FR 9A-7P Independence Plaza SA 9A-6P 5060 Jackson SU 12A-5P Ann Arbor, MI 48103 (313) 747-7525 2890 Washtenaw (at Golfside) Fountain Square Plaza Ypsilanti, MI 48197 (313) 434-1234 COMMENTS: Review pending...haven't made it there, yet __________________________________________________________________________ PET SUPPLIES PLUS MO-FR 9A-9P Woodland Plaza Shopping Center SA 9A-7P 2224 S. Main SU 11A-6P Ann Arbor, MI 48103 (313) 994-5432 Traver Village Shopping Plaza 2639 Plymouth Ann Arbor, MI 48104 (313) 741-5100 COMMENTS: Good service. Average fish selection. No live plants. Large supply selection. __________________________________________________________________________ UNIVERSITY AQUARIUM AND PET SHOP Westgate Shopping Plaza 2561 Jackson Ann Arbor, MI 48103 (313) 663-0224 COMMENTS: Convenient Westside location in the Westgate Plaza. Good fish selection. Don't recall if they had live plants, or not. Average supply selection. __________________________________________________________________________
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I had a fish tank once, with lots of really cool fish. Then one day I went to the pet store and bought two cool-looking Guppies. Problem was they didnt like fish food, they liked fish. The two of them ate most of the rest ofmyfish, and then one Guppie ate the other. So I was left with one fat fish. It was too much trouble tokeep a tank withonly one fish, so I gave the fish away. *sigh* Id like to have an aquarium again someday.
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Re: Response #12: If you are only using distilled water, then that's why you're having to replace minerals; remember, distilled water is pure h2o, so when you exchange water, you lose minerals.
Because I have set up a simple water analysis portable lab for other uses, I analyzed our aquarium's water - the one in which we use only distilled water for replenishment of evaporated water. In the conventional jargon the results are: pH 3.43 (WOW!). NO3- > 44. mg/L as NO3- (High!) O2 2.9 mg/L (ca. 35% of saturation) Ca 242. mg/L as CaCO3 Mg 160. mg/L as CaCO3 This is pretty sick water. I have been exchanging 2.5 gallons /5 every few days with distilled. The low O2 is surprising even though I don't have a bubbler as only one fish is in residence, and the water is circulated through a filter, so there should be plenty of surface area for good exchange.
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