Fry are maturing

So I bought my 29 gallon tank. The idea is to use this as the main storage for all my guppies. I bought a tank divider, so I essentially have two 15-gallon High tanks in one unit...one side for each sex. I filled it with water (including some water from the other tanks, to start the nitrate process) and a sponge filter and started it cycling. The fry are like miniature adults now, except for their color. They are active and habituated to my hand, so they dont run or hide when I feed them.

I got some black marine sand (very fine, but not as fine as silt) because I thought it would look cool. And it does. But I wasnt prepared for the problems it causes. It has pretty much ruined my power filter. If you ever put sand in a tank make sure you leave your filter off until the sand has settled...it gets into the moving parts of the filter and interferes with their movement, making the filter useless. It also has an annoying tendency to clot around air bubbles, giving it a messy appearance. After an hour or so of stirring it I got most of the bubbles out, and it looks like normal sand.

I rinsed it out and have got it working again, but I think it is permanently damaged. It was a Penguin bio-wheel filter, so it wasnt cheap. Live and learn I guess.

My snails are actually reproducing finally...I have about 5 or 6 apple snails, and I have been trying to breed them as well. I have a single giant Ramshorn snail in my goldfish tank...it's the only one I have found in any pet store so far and I'd love to breed it and get more. I have been told it is a species of Apple Snail, but I have not seen it attempt to mate with any of the other Apple Snails yet.

But all that is growing in the tank are the Pond snails (which arent very useful, and visually unappealing because they only grow to about a centimeter and are a dull brown color). Pond snails reproduce VERY fast, so they are infesting my tanks like little lice. I've begun picking them out by hand to thin their numebrs...I wish I had something that would eat them.

But anyway, in the process of doing this I came across two snails that didnt look like the others. They have vertical (flat) shell spirals of Apple Snails instead of the cone-shaped shells of the Ramshorn snails. So far I have only found two, but they are pretty cool colors too. One of them is already bigger than the adult Ranshorn snails in the tank.

I have been doing the same extermination process in my work tank. Where, unfortunately, the guppy holocaust continues. I lost another two females over the weekend, and am about to lose one of the yellow males. Keeping females alive is apparently really really hard.

The First Guppy Holocaust

Well I suppose it had to happen. I had my first mass extinction because I didnt pay attention to the water chemistry in my 5.5 gallon tank at home.

My 10 gallon goldfish tank is almost completely self sufficient...it is fully cycled and had so many plants that they eat all the pollutants in the tank. So Ammonia and nitrate levels are zero, and nitrite levels are low, despite the fact that I rarely do water changes. The fish are very active and seem happy. The plants and snails maintain the water quality for me and the water is always crystal clear.

I made the assumption that I could do the same thing in my guppy tank as well. That it would in fact be easier because guppies only pollute the water a fraction as much as the much messier goldfish. I was wrong.

I think my main miscalculation was putting too much fertilizer in the tankfor the plants. I didnt do water changes often, And I think I may have fed them too much. Also I dont have an undergravel filter because the tank is so small, just a sponge filter.

So anyway, three of them died off, including two pregnant females. There are four survivors, all males. They were lethargic and hanging out at the top of the water, depite the fact that the water was well oxygenated (which is never a good sign). I did a 75% water change, re-salted, and added a much more appropriate amount of fertilizer. The fish are clearly stressed (and I see ammonia burns on their fins), but the effect was almost immediate. They began swimming around normally. They still "rested" at the top or bottom of the tank periodically, but they were a lot more active.

So thats my lesson for this month....pay attention to water changes. They are important even if your fish dont seem to be affected. The females died overnight with no signs of distress and no warning.

The Fry in the nursery tank are doing well. As far as I can tell, I havnt lost any of them. They are all active and growing, and most can be sexed. Baby Brine Shrimp were an ideal food for them...not only are they small enough for even newborns to eat, but they stimulate predatory behavior and make the fry swim around (exercise). I am now supplementing with flake food.

I am buying a 29 gallon tank this weekend, and will use it with a divider to separate the sexes. I plan on making it my main planted tank for now on, and as soon as the fry are big enough not to get eaten by adults, I will start moving them over and separating them once the tank has cycled for a few days. I will be using water from my goldfish tank to jump-start the nitrate cycle.

Getting a little worried about my 6.6 gallon desk tank at work...I have six guppies in it and three of them swim around normally, but the other four are displaying teh same lethargic behavior I saw in my 5.5 gallon at home. I thought oxygenation might be a problem, so I added a bubble wall to supplement the power filter (no undergravel filter in this tank either). That and a water change helped, but they still "rest" at the top of the tank a lot. I dont know...maybe this is normal behavior. But I am not sure what else I can do.

I bought three ghost shrimp...I am experimenting with them as a supplement to the snails to clean the uneaten food, fish crap, and (maybe) algea in the tank. Not sure if they are helping anything, but they are kinda cool to watch either way. I have been told they breed fairly easily as well.