Fish Keeping and Communication.

So my husband and I learned a very valuable lesson this last week. What you may ask? We learned that when caring for our fish tanks and fish we need to communicate consistently and clearly. We had a tank tragedy that could have clearly been avoided if we had not assumed that the other person had changed the filter this month(our filter was covered in yuck and brown and the water was running around it not through it). We lost all of our adult female guppies and a few of the 2nd generation babies too. We are treating our tank with Marcyn 2 in combination with Melafix. We still have 1 quarantined that we are not sure is going to make it. So far none of the tetras died and we lost one albino ADF. Our common pleco seems fine and the snails were not affected. Suprisingly almost all of our guppy fry made it.

My husbands solution was we should both have smartphones so they can share a calendar so we both get reminded. I kinda wonder if he is trying to find ways to get outta talking to me!

Or he's just found a way to justify that new phone he wants. My hubby has a way of working his electronic justifications into conversations that seem so reasonable that almost always my first impulse is "ok, that sounds great". And I've a learned second impulse of "wait...did i just get played?"

And sorry to hear about your fishtrastrophe. That's a bummer.

Luckily, my husband doesn't touch any of my fish stuff! But I still manage to confuse myself sometimes. I've started keeping a piece of paper taped into the inside door of each of my tank stands to help me keep track. I have two filters running on most of my tanks and like to stagger the cleaning and there are so many of them that I can't do them all at once, so I write down the date that I did the maintenance on each filter.

@ VsKitchen: That makes perfect sense to me! I am probably getting played. LOL.

@Betty: Thats a great idea I should probably setup a fish calendar and mark WC and Filter chamge dates. Thanks for the idea!

That's a bummer sorry to hear that! I always bitch to my wife about not helping me out with the tanks,but I guess its a good thing after all!

The idea of this gadget was good, but I guess it was not dependable for temp readings.

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I have a journal and schedule, but I only have 7 tanks so there not to hard to keep track of. And since there all in my living space, if anything starts to show any sighn of anything at all close to discomfort or strange behaviour I just do a water change that day right away in addition to the schedule.

I really only use my journal for breeding and when I aquire new stock and where they are from. I stick to a schedule. And I do my water changes every sun and wed. And the first water change of the months I clean all my prefilters and detrius pads in my canisters.

i have a hard time keeping to a schedule cause i feel like im always changing water randomly and if im not changing water or doing something with my tanks i just feel wierd, but yesterday i spent a good two hours doing my water changes and gravel vac so i think im gonna get two the whole twice a week thing other than on my dovii fry who will get a change every other day. i love tank maintenence its fun

I agree fishman, upkeep is fun. I do w/c 3 times a week on my jag fry tank. I'm going to start every day on it to make them grow up faster. The male is wanting to spawn but the female isent really feeling it so I will grow out the young and get them outta here.

fish_n_vw wrote:I agree fishman, upkeep is fun. I do w/c 3 times a week on my jag fry tank. I'm going to start every day on it to make them grow up faster. The male is wanting to spawn but the female isent really feeling it so I will grow out the young and get them outta here.

glad someone else out there like me. the fish deserve the clean water. i need my doviis to grow as im choosing my future pair outa there. theyre a generation removed from mels male i bred myself so im excited to watch them grow

Yeah, exciting stuff. Btw 2 hours.... I freakin wish. I just finished w/c in all my tanks and did a gravel vac in two of them. Only took me 3 and a half hours, that's the absolute fastest I have it down to, and that's running 2 hoses. But its still fun.

mines really easy cause i stretch the the hoses from the tanks to my shower to the tanks with and then the hose from the sink with a gravel vac inbetween and glass scrub. it helps all my tanks are in one room. i do about 250 gallons of changes. really good system

Wait changed what? Filter cartridge?

I do quarterly maintenance on my two filters, with a month between each filter's work. For my canister I turn it off, drain it out, rinse the filter pads in tank water, then put it back together and go. For my Aquaclear20 I basically do the same thing. Never doing both in the same month to make sure I don't upset my good bacteria, and I never use carbon unless I medicate, which is umm.... almost never as keeping pristine water is better for treating fish illnesses than meds

@gryphon my guppy tank is a 40 B and I run a HOB filer on it and we both thought the other changed the cartridge...We learned from our mistake, I don't have any canister filters as of yet. I have been looking though. and I don't add carbon I have read that it is not good for your fish.

I can't get any of my family to open the back door to let the dogs go to the bathroom so I guess I don't have to really worry about someone touching my tanks. My mom got a betta a couple weeks ago and she decided I was going to be the sole caretaker of her fish...

I've never had a problem with filter maintenance as I check them every time a water change is done, which is about once a week. I run multiple filters on each tank so that if I rinse one filters media out I still have 1 or 2 more filters that won't be messed with until the next water change. I also rinse the media out in the tank water that I've just removed from the tank, that way you're rinsing out all the scum but there's still a lot of good bacteria left on the media. Sorry about the loss of your fishies, it's always hard.

I've tried keeping a log of each tank but I'm just too lazy, I do keep a piece of paper taped on a tank if I have to treat a new fish as you don't want to mess up the meds regimen but that's about it as far as logs go.

Yeah carbon is bad, you might want to check the cartridges you're using, most have carbon in them. I modified a Biowheel 20 gal model, using a cartridge frame with a filter pad rubber banded over it, so when I had to do maintenance all I had to do was undo the rubber band and rinse the pad out in old tank water and redo.

My Aquaclear 20 is a HOB style filter as well (I run both on my 29 filtration overkill ) I tossed the charcoal pack and just run the sponge and a bag of bio-max inside it. Most of the HOBs are easy enough to either alter what you have in them, or alter a cartridge to set it up for your own benefit.

If you're interested lemme know what kind of HOB you're running, I can probably figure out a means of altering either the cartridge or the set up so you won't have to worry about changing cartridges any more (saves money! and helps keep your good bacteria stable).

@Ratlova: You are right not easy to lose fish...checking with wc is a good idea too...

@Gryphon: I use aqueon flters on all my setup tanks. been looking at alternative filter media. Filter cartridges aren't cheap...can you post pic of your homemade filter cartridge?

I just buy the big sheets of filter foam/media from petsmart(I think it's like $6). One side is blue and the other side is white. I cut it to fit the width needed for each filter(and then about 8 inches long) and then I roll the piece that I had cut out a couple times and shove it into the filter. I don't throw my filter media away unless it falling apart. This was the best economical solution for me when I had 20 tanks going and I still do my media this way.

Oh yeah, those have activated carbon in them. And sadly I don't have pictures of the bio-wheel, I gave it to my father-in-law to put on his tank as his tank was disgusting.

Assuming these are the cartridges you use
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They looks to be a challenge to modify without seeing/having the cartridge on hand. But never fear!

If you happen to have an old one left from a previous change try cutting a slit along the top of the foam, on what would be the side facing the back of the filter. Shake the carbon out into the trash, and replace with bio-max (Ceramic cylinders, for the good bacteria). If it has slots for additional cartridges, I would get a sheet of filter floss, and cut a cartridge sized piece to place before the modified cartridge.

i kinda did the same thing with my magnum 350 canister. i filled up the area for the carbon with scour pads and wrapped it in quilt batting for mechanical filtration. works like a dream and way more bio media

Yeah, I need to get to a dollar store and look for some of the nylon scrubbies for my canister, I noticed last time I did maintenance the filter pads were starting to look a little ragged.

If you google "Aqueon filter mods" there are some things people have done and posted.

I have a small hob Azoo palm filter on my 2.5g betta tank. one of the mods for it was to use an aquaclear 20 sponge. This has worked extremely well for it. There is a tiny bit of room in the filter for some ceramic bio rings which I added. The sponge just pressure fits in the chamber. Seems like the Aqueon could also be modded easily with a large sponge and bags of bio media.

Even better, mods from people who've actually done them, and not me theory-crafting lol

Thanks for the great idea everyone!

@Gryphon: Those are them!

@DMD: Thank you for the suggestion I think I will be able to work something out.

As for an update for the moment I bought some black filter sponges with nothing in them to hold my tank over and I am having to treat with Maracyn 2 again as I just lost 2 more guppies tonight. I made a mistake changing the filters and the activated carbon deactivated the medicine... I feel like an idiot. Live and learn though!