tanya77586

I have 30 gal hexagon tank. We keep temp at 78. Petco told me today to take out the heater. I have 3 large angels, a sucker fish and a catfish. They told me that normal room temp is fine; but aren't angels tropical and need the heat? My husband has a real problem with removing the heater and asked me to start asking people online their opinions. I am also having milky problems and now algea (the algea we attributed to too much sunlight near the tank last few days). They also told me to only feed once a day, don't keep lights on 12 hours at a time...just a few hours a day...the water is a little hard but other than that the strip test looks good. ANy advice would be greatly appreciated!!
Thanks,
Tanya in Seabrook, TX

fishman07

if i were you i wouldnt really listen to the people at the BIG fish stores, a lot of those folks are just kids that are working to pay for a car or school and really dont know that much..imo talking to a owner of a smaller store and most def talking to the people here will give you better advice, also try reading up on the types of fish that you have..tons of books at Barnes and Noble and Borders..research research research...."JUST SAY NO TO PETCO"..LOL

Andyoybna

I have to agree, you can't take what people say too seriously at ANY pet store, you have to slowly learn which employees actually know what they are talking about. There is only 2-3 people that I deal with at all when getting fish at my local stores, if those people aren't working I go home. There is one person at my local petco (where I used to work) that is very good, I hang out with him, just tried out fragging a few corals for him last week, anyways if he isn't working, I usually catch my own fish since most of the people know me.... One good thing is that they have no idea what anything is, so I've gotten some really good deals such as a various expensive saltwater fish sold as damsels, and cashiers not ringing fish up at all. However at the other LFS locally I only deal with one girl that I also know, my fiance was picking up a cleaner shrimp on her way home from work, and another girl that was working there started throwing rock all over the place, slammed the shrimp up against the glass, took a large piece of live rock and threw it on a very expensive fox coral, that is most likely dead.... Anyways my advice is to pick and choose who you deal with at pet stores, go there often and get to know the employees, also be a bit excited and seem more interested, they will be more willing to help. Also another thing to look at is employees that are doing water changes, as they do the maintenance and are likely more concerned about the livestock, know what is going on in the store, and just know what they're doing in general. You can also test the employees with questions you already know the answer to. Maybe ask them how a tank is cycled, or can I put put 3 oscars in my 30 gallon tank? Maybe ask them what brackish is, what salinity their SW or brackish tanks are.... etc... It takes a bit of time. The other thing you can do is watch them interact with other costumers, if they are rough with the fish etc.... then they probably don't care or understand how sensitive they are, I used to actually catch some fish by hand since it was less stressful on them. If they just swing a net around all over the place instead of slowly try and come up under the fish, take note of that.

Anyways it all depends on the individual, my friend at petco is great, always helping people, all his costumers love him, very knowlegable about FW/BW/SW fish, and reptiles. but he is the only one there that knows ANYTHING at all.... If I go to petsmart, nothing against them its a new store and all, but no one there knows anything at all about fish or reptiles.

Also, as far as advice about taking out your heater.... that is rediculous while room temperature may be enough during the day in the spring/summer, even at night it can drop into the sixties possibly killing your fish not to mention the constant temperature changes, the only fish I reccomend without a heater is goldfish, and other coldwater carp, some catfish like common pleco can also withstand extreme temperatures, or maybe american cichlids where temps get down to the 50's-60's in the winter at night.

As for your milky problem, it sounds like a bacteria bloom, how long has your tank been set up for? It may just be cycling.

Did petco test your water? Usually they use quick dip test strips which are innacurate and usually abused, maybe sometimes get wet...and people who don't know what they're doing don't know what the numbers mean.

My advice would be to get your own test kit, the chemical test kits for freshwater run around $20-$30 depending on how many tests, what brand, and where you buy it. I reccomend the chemicals over the strips because they are generally easier to read, more accurate, and extremely hard to get contaminated, they also don't expire. If you do get the test strips, I would actually reccomend basically the ones they use at petco to test your water, the 7 in one test strip, I believe mardel, API also has one I believe.... but again not terribly accurate and if they get wet, or even high humidity can ruin them. You can also purchase individual chemical test kits for each chemical for generally $4-5. Anyways the 3 main chemicals you are looking at are Nitrate, Nitrite, and Ammonia. Optional things that also give you good information are: Ph, Hardness, Alkalinity, Phosphate, Chlorine

With your algae bloom, it may be related to sunlight coming in from a window, if the tank has been set up for a while and it is just now happening there isn't much you can do about it, the sun will gradually change position and move past the tank, it could probably last anywhere from 1-3 months depending on size of window, where you live, etc. You can try keeping the blinds and curtains shut on that window and see if that helps at all.

Also with how long to keep your lights on- Generally about 8-10 hours, however in my tanks it is usually a lot longer, sometimes 6am to 11pm and I don't have too bad of an algae problem, it mostly depends on the spectrum of your lighting, you probably have a general full spectrum flourescent bulb, and is most likely 5500k, If you change that to a 10k bulb you will probably like the look of the tank better and it will prevent the algae from getting the yellow spectrum that it needs to grow. On the other hand a little bit of algae is a sign of a healthy tank.

As far as feeding.... It really depends on your fish, however I would reccomend feeding twice a day, once in the morning, and once at night. And feed no more than what your fish can eat in 2-3 minutes with your 3 angels you shouldn't be feeding very much, just a small pinch of flakes. You may also want to try live or frozen blood worms, they loves those and really help the color out.


And of course... WELCOME TO FTF!!!!

If you have any more questions feel free to ask, and if you don't know about cycling check out the article about it in the article section, very, very good information.

tanya77586

ANdyoybna/others
Thank you for all of the great advice. The woman at Petco is the fish dept. mgr so of course I thought...she should know what she is talking aobut.
As far as the milky problem...here is a little tank history. Put it up last summer. Never did anything; it was beautiful. Also had 2 grommies in there. the grommies died. the angels, catfish and sucker are all fine. A few months ago it got cloudy and never cleared up (which PETCO attributes to too much feeding). We bought the Mardel 5-in-1 test strips and everything is fine except for some hard water, kind of high nitrates, and kind of low ph. The lady also told me that water has been testing really strange around here since Rita and Katrina hurricanes (I live on the Gulf of Mexico abut 30 miles n of Galveston Island).

About 1 month ago, my husband emptied the tank, cleaned everything out, and put the fish back in. He did use a minimal amount of the same water that came out of the dirty tank. It was clear and beautiful for a couple of days then started getting milky again. About a week later he did a partial (20%) water change...the booklet with the test strips said that a partial water change could help the nitrates. Now I was told today about the "Cycle" and that we should have not done that partial water change, but let the cycle work it's way through. I do understand that the algae came from me being home during the day recently and allowing natural light to be on the tank all day.
It seems you completely disagree with the feeding once a day. Do you agree that maybe too much food caused the milkiness?
We have always had the light on ( a straight tube across the top) from about 6 am to about 6 or 7 pm. PETCO lady says that is way too much. But you leave yours on all day as well. Again, I have removed the sunlight source that has caused the algae growth the past few days.

I bought some barley pellets called ALGO CLEAR at her recommendation today. SHe also told me to rinse out the filter and replace. Then stir up the bottom of the tank, and repeat every couple of hours for a few times. I was told that I need another pump at the bottom of the tank becasue my water was only filtrating/cycling at the top of the tank and that hexagon tanks need another pump at the bottom, and that is why the green is more apparent at the bottom of the tank and clearer at the top.

I think the "cycle" has completed because it is not really milky anymore. But wiuth the increase in algae and the water being green it is hard to tell.

Thanks for your comments, and any more are greatly appreciated!!!

Andyoybna

Ok, well when you emptied the tank a month ago, this destroyed your cycle, in the future you want to avoid this at all costs. I am pretty certain that the milky water was your bacteria bloom. There is no way that you caused it by overfeeding, unless maybe you fed your fish milk .

On top of closing the blinds on that window, you may also want to keep on top of that you may want to keep the lights in the tank off for a few days. Algae blooms can be a real pain, although they don't hurt the tank it isn't very pleasant to look at. Getting rid of an algae bloom can also get to as extreme as covering the tank for 24 hours, basically a complete black out to starve to algae and kill it. You may also have phosphate in your water, either from overfeeding or it is in your tap/well. Most likely since you havn't had problems in the past though, it was just the extra light, natural sunlight has tons of the yellow spectrum algae feeds off of. It'll probably go away gradually. But I must agree with one thing she did say... Stir the gravel a lot and vacuum it do about a 10-20% water change each day, or every other day for about a week to get the bloom out of the gravel and water.

Also it sounds like the fish manager went to petco's fish class of bull honkity. They basically brainwash people into thinking that a 2 hour class on what to sell people for this and this and this, and being able to look at the compatibility chart makes them an expert. They basically give them a guide that says for this, sell this....

Anyways stirring up that gravel will be a bit hard on your filters, but a little trick is to just put a paper towel in front of it, shouldn't restrict the flow much and all the big stuff will stick to the paper towel. your filter cartridges should last 2-4 weeks, and you are better off buying 2 large sponges, course and fine, then cutting them to size, and just rinse them with water the same temp as your tank, so you don't have to replace your expensive filter media all the time and you can just re-use those. Also carbon really is not needed, no use spending all the extra cash on it.

As for the water flow at the bottom of the tank a 30 hex is pretty tall, more water movement may help down there but instead of a big pump you could do an air stone to move the water up to the filter better.

With the barley pellets, i've never heard of those... couldn't tell ya if they work or not. IME every product I have tried for removing algae either doesn't work or has bad side effects, however in my saltwater tank I have been using Poly-Ox to get rid off my red cyano bacteria (slime algae) It basically disolves any decaying organic and removes phosphate, I havn't had any problems with it, and it may work for freshwater.

Don't worry about doing water changes, it won't mess with your cycle at all, and it'll keep your nitrates down. When you say your nitrates were a little bit high, how many PPM was it?

tanya77586

Today my readings were as follows:
ph 6.4
hardness 250
alk 0-80
nitrire 0-0.5
nitrate 80

I sure do appreciate your time and suggestions!!

Andyoybna

Your parameters look pretty good, your cycle is almost complete. You really want those NitrItes at 0, and I would reccomend about a 30% water change and vaccuum the gravel well, you want to try and keep those nitrates around 40-60, but really as low as possible, but once they get much over 60-80 range your fish may start to stress a bit. You are very lucky to have a low PH and low alkalinity very easy to move your PH up if you ever need to, but that 6.4 is good for your angels if I were you I would be looking into discus in the future with that water, as I can only dream of it with 7.8 PH and very hard water.

tanya77586

i thought our numbers looked pretty good, except for the nitrates. my husband informed me that he has the pickup tube for the pump going down the tank about 3/4 of the way. we will pick up a vacuum, start doing some regular water changes for a while, and see how things go!!
thank you, and talk to youa gain soon i hope!

BJP

If the intake to your filter doesn't reach low enough in the tank then look into getting an extra extention tube to add to it so it collects from further down. Most filter manufacturers offer them. You might have to find another store to have it special ordered though and they'll need to know the manufacturer name and model number of the filter to match it correctly. It wouldn't be a bad idea to find another store anyway based on the sorry advice you've been getting so far.

Let the gravel vacuum do your stirring. If it isn't picking the gravel up and tumbling it in the tube it's undersized. That way you clean up the debri down there at the same time you rotate the gravel around. if it's tall enough you don't even have to get your fingers wet.

Leave the heater in. Even goldfish can benefit from having the bounce taken out of tank temperature swings from day to night and season to season.

Rinse out the filter regularly and replace when it finally falls apart. That may be every 3 to 6 months or more before they wear out. There's no real benefit to replacing it over rinsing it and reusing it other than maybe a little fresh carbon which exhaust quickly and can be added seperately to most filters if desired one way or another.

If the water is green you have way to much light. That could be from a window or from a bulb starting to go bad in your hood. Usually it's a window or at least light bouncing off something then hitting the tank indirectly. If your bulbs about a year old then it's getting close to time for a new one. Hagen's AquaGlo bulb gives a nice viewing spectrum without any excess algae issues. You should be able to run it as many ohours a day as needed without green water issues if that's the only light source. Generally though we limit the hours in unplanted tanks to the prime viewing hours to control or limit secondary algae growth on the glass and decor. My planted tanks run about 12 hours. I've got one tank the light only comes on for cleaning and when company is over.

According to Marinelands sales reps back in the mid 90's, the Emporer 280 power filter was created just for the 35 gallon hex's to fit the frame and it should have enough extention tubing length included as well as offered seperately if you ever want a new filter system.

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tanya77586

We used the gravel vacuum lst night and did a 30% water change. You can see the difference this morning; but it was pretty bad after I stirred everything up yesterday! We will continue with the water changes daily for a few days by removing the green water from the bottom and that barley crud she told me to use. You guys rock! If I ever want to use my big window again; we'll have to move that tank though!