New to my tank, Need advice, and also a question about substrate
- Thread starter figuare9
- Start date
Even if you have good filtration you still need to do water changes, usually weekly. This will be especially important for you right now if you have food that is sitting in there not being eaten. The uneaten food will throw your water parameters off. Not doing regular water changes can cause a whole mess of problems. Aside from water with too much amonia directly killing your fish poor water conditions can also cause them to get diseases such as fin rot and HITH.
You can change to sand with your tank full. Make sure you throughly vacum your gravel before you start removing it because it will kick up a lot of buried poo. Since you tank might not be cycled yet. I would hold off on switching the substrate for a little while until your water is all squared away and your fish are adjusted to their new home. They are probably already stressed from the lack of cycling and water changes. Once you are ready to change make sure you rinse your sand really well. Put a prefilter on your filter intake so it doesn't suck up a bunch of sand and turn the filters off when you initially add the sand. Once the sand is settled turn the filter back on. Your tank will likely still be cloudy for a couple days though. You can look into adding a water polisher to help with this.
The uneaten pellets might be too big. Or you might just be overfeeding. Try feeding these alone first and see if anyone attempts to eat them.
Kudos for trying to get this straightened out and to learn. There are many threads in here that can help you and I suggest you read some stickys about water parameters, cycling and general fish keeping to help you get up to speed.
You can change to sand with your tank full. Make sure you throughly vacum your gravel before you start removing it because it will kick up a lot of buried poo. Since you tank might not be cycled yet. I would hold off on switching the substrate for a little while until your water is all squared away and your fish are adjusted to their new home. They are probably already stressed from the lack of cycling and water changes. Once you are ready to change make sure you rinse your sand really well. Put a prefilter on your filter intake so it doesn't suck up a bunch of sand and turn the filters off when you initially add the sand. Once the sand is settled turn the filter back on. Your tank will likely still be cloudy for a couple days though. You can look into adding a water polisher to help with this.
The uneaten pellets might be too big. Or you might just be overfeeding. Try feeding these alone first and see if anyone attempts to eat them.
Kudos for trying to get this straightened out and to learn. There are many threads in here that can help you and I suggest you read some stickys about water parameters, cycling and general fish keeping to help you get up to speed.
Alrighty, I just bought a 100 pld bag of red flint.. heres the website
http://www.redflint.com/
I was told that it was already clean, its not white like i wanted, but i think itll be a lot better than the crappy big gravel i have now. what are your guys's opinion about it?
http://www.redflint.com/
I was told that it was already clean, its not white like i wanted, but i think itll be a lot better than the crappy big gravel i have now. what are your guys's opinion about it?
Okay, so I swapped out my substrate, and did a lot of cleaning.. 6 hours of it actually. It was definitely a LOT of work.. more than I think I'm willing to do again, but I hope I won't have to. Here's some pictures of the new red flint substrate, and my new tank design! I hope you like it, I love it, and I put a lot of work into it. The water is still murky from the substrate change.
Lissaspence;3452533; said:
Not good.. well better now.
When I changed the substrate to the sand, I had to take my fish out, and I put them in a cooler for about 3 hours. I dropped a little food in there, worked on my tank, did the water change, and put them back into the tank. When I did, they barely had any color to them at all. my pict cats hardly even had spots on them.. it looked like you could see through all my fish. not sure why, or what happened. They went into the new tank, everything seemed fine, then one of my sharks died. the next day one of my catfish died.. So I thought it was from stress, or sickness, etc. I went to the store to replace the fish, and I got 3 chiclids. I got a cool lookin white one with red eyes (albino looking) and a bright yellow and orange one. The orange one was very agressive, so I gave it away, but the albino and yellow one really seem to mind their own business. They hardly start anything at all with other fish. I keep a close watch on them, never had a problem with the two. So anyways after all this.. my fish got ick disease. (the little white spots) so I've been curing them of that for the past week. just did another water change. they're getting a LOT betteey r. Thseem to be happy and in their place now. It's finally coming together nicely. I also added some aquarium salt for freshwater, says itll help speed up recovery, and calm the fish down. I'm not adding anymore fish for a long time. I have a beta I'm thinking of introducing to the tank that's been quarantined for about a week. he's healthy, just not sure how he's going to get along with everyone else. I'm sure my problems could've been avoided, but I'm new, inexperienced, and still learning. but my water's clearer, and my fish are getting healthy again. I'm sure the ich disease could've been avoided, but maybe it came from a fish that I bought. not sure. either way it's a pain in the *** to get rid of. and now I have to forever worry about it coming back.. sigh. oh well. Maybe I'll take a picture of the newer setup, the live plants I have, and the new fish later.
