It started when my kids went on a kindy excursion to the Pasir Ris Pet Kampung. There the children were allowed to net their own fish ( dubious stock of uncertain health ) and they came home with a bag of guppy like fish .
Needless to say that lot died fast and because we had a filter and 25 litre tank available to house these , I bought a bag of mollies and platties for Singapore $1 , My guess was that these were probably feeder stock . I didn’t expect these to last long as I didn’t know much about fish .
To cut a long story short , my fish started dying and I searched the net for answers , I realised that we lacked something called aquarium salt . Once I had this added , There was no looking back . It was amazing what the addition of a teaspoon of salt did for those mollies . They started to thrive . It works out to about 3 teaspoons for the 50 or 60 litres of water I had in my main tank . This amount I discovered could be dialled up or down gradually as mollies are pretty adaptable .
One day I noticed that the mollies were flaring their fins and chasing each other about the tank . I didn’t think too much of it until the day I found about a dozen fry and they were huge !!! Subsequent lots of fry were smaller . I couldn’t believe that something of that size could come out of such a tiny fish .
Now that my adults were thriving , I was hopeful that the fry would too as I wanted my children to watch fish grow up to adulthood and learn something about a life cycle . My ever dying fry set me searching again and again for answers . I couldn’t figure out what was wrong until I joined an email list . That together with net searches and eventually a name popped up for all the fry deaths that I was witnessing :
The New Tank syndrome
All this was pretty heady for someone who started off knowing nothing about fish . I was getting rather frustrated as I saw more ( fish ) deaths than Qunicy did as a Pathologist .
After some trial and error I started my fry tank over again . The 25 litre tank ( bought cheap ) had now become my spare tank as we had a tank that could hold about twice that amount that had been given to us by a pupil . This now housed my adults . I wanted very much to have a lush planted aquarium like those I had seen off the Internet and at The Pet Safari but had to contend with building the aquarium up bit by bit as much as my pocket would allow .
I lost quite afew fry with each drop but over time learning through mistakes made , I managed to raise my first few to almost adulthood ... Thanks to aquaria-freshwater ( an email list at egroups.com ) .
I am no fish expert and do not have the cash to buy costly test kits so I went by mostly by instinct and consulting people online . It is unfortunate that good quality aquarium equipment is costly where I live .
I have in these few short months discovered the following commandments well respected by my scaly friends *L* .
Thou shalt use some salt in thy molly tank .
Thou shalt not over feed thy fish .
Thou shalt not serve thy fish the same dish day in and out .
Thou shalt not believeth EVERYTHING blindly that thou hath readet off the net .
Thou shalt giveth thy fish adequate cover to hide regardless of whether it is plastic or real .
Thou shalt not tap on the glass and send thy fish into cardiac arrest .
Thou shalt lay some dark gravel on thy tank’s bottom . ( Believe me it makes a difference ) .
Thou shalt not forget thy regular partial water changes . ( As often as 5 or 10% daily if the tank has no filter .. eg a betta tank ) . Note that the amount depends on the type of tank and its contents and whether or not there is a filter .
Thou shalt give thy fish a merciful death if it is ailing and there is obviously no hope . ( This is a lot kinder than keeping it alive and watching it suffer a slow death ) .
Above all thou shalt enjoy thy fishy friends .
click on the picture above to get to the next page on newbie concerns
This was long ago and this lot have since died off . Its a long story . But I started over