torimarshall

Hello, Everyone. I'm a newcomer to the world of owning an aquarium, so please bare with me as I ask a few dumb questions
I recently bought a male crowntail betta, and I he is being housed in a filtrated two gallon tank. After much research and a lot of hatting with the pet care associates at the pet store, I bought three Zebra Danios to go in this tank. The fish are all doing well together, and it seems like they are all comfortable with their space.
First Question: The pet care associate said that adding a bottom feeder, such as a Ghost Shrimp, an Oto-something algae eater (please forgive my ignorance!), a snail, or a dwarf frog. At this time, my fish are all doing well with the space they have. If I add one of these, will it become too cramped?
Second Question: The aquarium has an undergravel filtration system which includes a bottom plate, and air stone, a riser tube, and an airline tube...and I also have a gravel vacuum. I'm wondering, since there is no actual filter or carbon cartridge, if I need to buy something else to make sure the water is actually being properly filtered, especially since I have more than just a betta in my tank.

Thanks for taking taking the time to read my extremely long post!

Tommy Gun

Welcome to the forum! It is great to meet you!

This may sound harsh, but I would say you are 'too cramped' right now even. The best way to approach your new tank is not to think in terms of space or swimming room (although that is very important as well), but more in terms of how much fish wastes are being placed into your tank by X amount of fish. In reality, I would place a bet that your tank is going to experience some troubles here in the near future. To get an idea on why I feel this way, check out this 'sticky' article on cycling a tank:

http://www.fishtankforums.com/5-fres...-aquarium.html

Even if you have already cycled your tank, which you may or may not have been made aware of by your pet care associate, the same rules still apply in that the more fish wastes that are added into your tank, the harder it becomes for you to keep the water quality high. There are generally two ways to overstock a tank...one is by adding fish that are going to outgrow the size of the tank as they mature, and the other is by adding too many fish. I appologize for sounding like I am being mean or anything negative, but I think everyone else here would agree that a 2 gallon tank is better off with only one fish in it, probrably your betta fish since they can survive easily in a small body of water.

The other part of that question is if you truly need a bottom feeder in this tank. The answer is absolutely not....you can avoid the need for one by not over feeding and scraping the glass free of any algae you may find growing. In such a small tank, and considering that most algae eaters are high waste producing fish, you would be best off by preventing algae rather than trying to control it via a fish, shrimp, or snail. In a larger tank though, you may have some more 'wiggle room' for adding an algae eater. My instincts are telling me that your pet care associate is just trying to make a sale here and he or she should know this sort of thing and be sharing it with you. (You will probrably find that on any aquaria forum, there is a bad taste in most everyone's mouth for pet stores/fish stores do to misinformation being spread around a lot)

In reality, it could easily be argued that an under gravel filter (UGF) is the best filtration available for an aquarium. However, the benifits can quickly be erased by poor maintenance on the UGF when detrius and uneaten food starts getting trapped underneath the plate for a long time.

After you have read that sticky article on cycling a tank, you will understand better how bacteria is used to an aquariums advantage. Since this bacteria is found in the substrate (and other areas) of your tank, the UGF works by creating a flow of water through the substrate (gravel), where the bacteria can take out the fish wastes. So, you do not need another filter, but you do need to learn how to take care of this UGF to maintain its performance. If you are unsure about how to do this or how to find out how to do this, let us know and we would be more than happy to help you out!

torimarshall

Yeah, I was afraid of it already being overcrowded...I'd heard before that the general rule is one gallon per inch of fish, but the pet care associate told me this shoul be fine. I guess I should have known what she was saying was fishy when she told me I could have all of the following: a betta, three danios, a shrimp, a frog, AND an algae eater...I definately knew she was wrong when she told me that.
So, I'll definately be cleaning the tank every three days or so, just to make sure the fish are nice and healthy. How often do you reccomend that I clean underneath the bottom plate?
Again, thank you so much for all of your help. And don't feel like you sound mean, it's all very helpful.

Tommy Gun

This is a common phrase thrown around in the hobby and to be honest, it is really not true for a couple of reasons. First, the origonal 'inch per gallon' rule only applies to fish which are less than 4 inches as adults and have the body type similar to your danios. However, that got mixed up and was applied entirely too much to any fish which brings me to the second reason why this is not a good measurement for stocking fish and that is some fish are just more messy, or create more wastes, than others, so that limits the amount of fish you can keep healthy without having to do water changes daily. Like I said, my gut feeling is that your pet associate is just trying to sell you something and is probrably well aware that your chances of success are not as good as they could be with your current situation. In fact, I would also place a bet saying that if one of your fish did die, the pet associate would blame it on something other than overstocking, sell you another fish and some miracle quick fix...all of which you just do not need.

However, dont get too down about this. It is something that the vast majority of us have done to some extent or another. I know that I overstocked my tank at first, and that one was a 55 gallon tank. When that kept failing, I turned to forums like this one and did a bunch of research, and now I just know better. I am not sure of your plans or budget type stuff, but you can pick up a 10 gallon 'kit' tank with everything you need short of fish and substrate at walmart for about 30 dollars which I what I use quite often for raising fry and treating sick fish.

I hope that pun was intended because it is a good one! I would agree, she was way too fishy for selling you way to many fishies!

I have never used a UGF yet, but my guess would be about once a week or with every water change is the normal method. However, with having so many fish, I would clean yours out like you said, every three days. Still, this is really just a guess and probrably not a very accurate one, so hopefully someone with experience in UGFs would help you out with the hows and whens

torimarshall

Yep, I'll be upgrading my tank as soon as I am able to find space.
I'm just thankful that, at the moment, all of the fish are very active and seem very healthy. I'll keep my eye on them and test the water frequently to make sure that everything is perfect for them! Thank you so much for all of your help. I really appreciate it!