Fish Newbie - Tank Issues

TechRangerBrad · 11-08-2006, 05:18 PM

Greetings,
So now I shall prove my ignorance . . . We purchased a 10g tank set about a month ago. We waited 7 days before we put a couple of fish in there. Within 5 days of putting fish in the tank we awoke one day to find 6 baby fish darting around. Since then we have had "gunk" start to develop on the rocks, plants, objects and now it is spreading up the glass. Various people have given their opinions on overfeeding the fish, or fish poop. However, today as I was sitting by the tank, I noticed that water was pouring out the intake of the filter. I plan on buying a new filter, I guess I am curious as to what may have caused all of this so I don't repeat this problem. The babies are growing like crazy and the two adults look and act normal.

Brad

fishuz · 11-08-2006, 05:26 PM

What color is the gunk is it algae. is your tank located near a window and how long do you keep the lights on. you should clean the filter out but make sure you use tank water for this task (what Brand of filter do you own )

andy53 · 11-08-2006, 05:49 PM

If it is algae, like it sounds, I would just add a snail. I had a similar algae problem and added a snail, and within a few hours had most of the algae cleaned up off the glass and gravel. I would just think twice about buying multiple snails because many of them tend to multiple very quickly, and over run your tank.

TechRangerBrad · 11-08-2006, 05:50 PM

The gunk is yellowish or golden there are a couple of spots of green on the blowin' bubble car (sorry for the name, the boy picked it out).

The tank is not near a window.

We leave the light on during the day, but turn it off at night so usually 6-8 hours a night there is not light.

As far as the filter brand . . . whisper advanced PF 5-15.

Thanks for any help.

Brad

fishuz · 11-08-2006, 06:18 PM

Do you vaccum the gravel and how often do you do water changes and change filter medium ?

Tommy Gun · 11-08-2006, 06:51 PM

Sounds like cynobacteria to me (blue/green algea). Is the 'gunk' really slimy? What type of fish did/do you have in the tank?

Mite be too early to give up on your filter as well as change the filter media, IMO but if you are going to change filters, bigger is better since you cannot overfilter a tank really.

I think 10 hours of 'lights on' with the tank is a better amount of time for you rather than the 16 to 18 hours (if I am reading that right). If this is cynobacteria, or any algea for that matter, light is a huge contributor to its ability to grow.

TechRangerBrad · 11-08-2006, 11:31 PM

So I went to a local pet store which has a huge fish selection. Probably should have went their to begin with instead of the big box pet store. They steered me in the right direction I feel.

I replaced the filter and bought a vacumn, we vacumned until 30% of the water was gone and replaced it. There are two mollies in there with 6 babies and all seemed to handle the vacumning and replacing the water just fine.

We were feeding the fish twice a day, the store recommended going to once every other day. What was interesting was when we started vacumning it was real apparent that there was a lot of food coming up. Flakey stuff. The other thing is that the fish seemed to have no problem eating the gunk.

They also assured me that the mollies were probably just fine even with the high ph levels in the water, hence the name "hardy" fish. So, I think I have at least started on a path of recovery. Thanks for all the advice and you can be sure I will be looking here often for advice.

Brad

Tommy Gun · 11-08-2006, 11:49 PM

I believe that one of the first things that should be looked at when having water quality issues is looking at how much and how often I am feeding. I went through a similar situation as you when I first started breeding mollies and platties. Reading the directions on the fish food can, I fed the tank twice a day. After going through a problem with outlandishly high nitrates, I realized that I was over feeding and cut back to once a day. In order to better figure out how much to feed, I just kept adding small pinches of flake food until I saw some hit the substrate and I would know that any more food I drop in the water would most likely become wasted. After a while, I got good at knowing how much to give the fish and I can now guess a better amount of food to feed.

Mollies are also found and reside in brackish water and so that is most likely the reason they can handle a high ph. They are also tough like you say and often the choice of fish to cycle a tank with (but I still dont recomend that),