Some newbie-ish questions

I know for a FACT that fish love to eat the choc chip ones, but not sure about other species. If your stars had small bites taken out of them, then you would know it was the fish that were guilty. Most of the time they eat whole legs off the poor star. I was in the LFS today and they had these beautiful little white shrimp with frillies and pink and purple spots. They had it in a small hermit crab plastic box floating in the DT. Well, all 3 of the little shrimps were eating a choc chip starfish. I guess this is the ONLY thing that the beautiful little shrimp eat. How sad, I could never own those guys if I had to feed them a poor star.

You will want to make sure you buy a test kit that is NOT EXPIRED. And just take all the parameters and write them down in a log, date it as well. The most important for a fish only tank would be ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, temp, salinity, and pH. You can buy a kit that will test for phosphates, karbonate hardness, and calcium as well. Especially if you plan on getting corals later. I think for corals you need a few more tests like magnesium, etc. So test all those things and write them in a log and post them here.

And since your tank is established, IF all the parameters are okay I would only do a small water change, like 5%, just to add a little fresh water. But if your parameters read something bad, you may have to do up to 50%. With the health of your fish I am sure your params are fine. I would do 10%. Make sure your water change water is prepared the day before you do the change. You will want to aerate and heat the water. You can let the water sit in a 27 gallon long rubbermaid tote with a lid. So if you don't have the tote or buckets or an extra heater and extra powerhead or airstone, you will want to buy them. You will need them anyway in the future. So your trip tomorrow to the LFS will be a little expensive, but you will NEED all of these things anyways.

As for the water changes, I bought my 75g a little over a month ago. All my params look okay and the fish are thriving but I plan on doing my first water change very shortly. But my 10g freshwater tank never had ANY water changes in years of life. The previous fish died of tap water most likely, but when I put 2 new shark catfish into it and tested awhile afterwards, the nitrates were at 100+. So quickly I did several water changes over 3 days and now they are down to 5ppm. Water changes can help out alot if your tank is polluted with toxins or old and needing tlc. Just get your kits and tell us where you are at!

 

i have a 100 gal fish only tank that has never had a water change running a undergravel w/powerheads thats never been cleaned for 12 years with no live rock, if i ever do clean it im sure it will all come crashing down cant imagine the gunk under the gravel....think there might even be a 11 year old damsel in there.

 

lol, that's funny...you mean a dead damsel or a live one? Does your tank look clean?

I just imagine that the cleaner you keep your tank, the better it will look and the more it will be able to accept new water changes. You let the biological filters do their job and you do the "cleaning" job. In a 20 gallon I would recommend water changes. In my 75g I am only recently starting to lean toward a water change due to the HIGH calcium levels I have. I want things on a even scale. My 10g would have crashed if I DIDN'T do the recent water changes, but that was because proper protective measurements were not taken in the beginning. I believe in both water changers and non-water changers, I believe it is "per" tank.

 

Awww....poor little starfish! I can't imagine having one of those shrimp & having to watch that little starfish slowly get eaten everyday

Thanks for the tip on checking for them expired! I didn't even realize they expired!

I'm glad its not completely awful to never have changed the water!

Thanks again for all of the help! This place is amazing

 

tank has layer of black/brown/red/green algae on everything fish eat some of it, clean the front glass and add tap water is all i do to that one,wife hates it..:laughings had a urchin in there think he over ate and died, all his spikes fell off and left this cool looking blue shell.. has clowns ,damsels ,cleaner shrimp , turbo snails ,hermit crabs.. well havnt seen the crabs in a while..
its my experiment on lazyness.. :thumb_up:

 

it's good to know that urchins can over-eat. I am worried about mine. Although their spikes falling off is a sign of poor water quality.

But I am not sure my tank has enough algae, mine is more along the lines of dead spots versus algae..lol..so I have been feeding him seaweed and am scared I am overfeeding him....we will see!

 

Hi, I don't know if you've said anything about it but..... you really shouldn't keep a mandarin goby in a tank that small, unless you buy copepods. also if the "yellow fish" is bothered in the aquarium its settled in, it's not gonna do any better with damsels that are already settled in. btw is that red slime or coralline algae that you have in your 20 gallon tank?

 

How long have you had that mandarin?

Also I just read some stuff about water changes. Basically to break it down, and give you more time to read about the "reasons" yourself, water changes help to keep lots of parameters stable and fresh. The book recommends once a month to do 20-25%. If you buy some of the larger test kits, the instructions will tell you all about levels and the importance of water changes. But if you don't have corals than the water changes aren't as important. Obviously if you have had your tank for awhile with no water changes..and there are many people who NEVER do water changes and have success...so it's really your choice but the more you read about it's benefits the more you may lean towards them.

How many inches would you say your black damsel is? Is he mean? I know I have the same blue devil damsel as you, mine are mean but I think the black ones are pretty too.

Have you found out what the yellow fish is? Just go onto a website and look at pictures of fish. Go to liveaquaria.com to look at pictures of fish

 

I've had the goby probably about 8 months or so.

I have no idea about what kind of algae...its not slimy or anything....as far as I can tell, it just looks like its the color the rocks are. (if that makes any sense...)

The black damsels (or what I believe they to be...they're currently a greyish color with a yellow stripe on the top, but apparently they turn completely black) aren't very mean. They don't really seem to bug the coral beauty or the smaller blue damsel that is in with them. I have a domino damsel in that tank that is quite the meanie though! He was one of the first fish I got & he had to moved into the bigger tank fairly quickly b/c he was attacking all of the other fish. Of course, I can't guarantee how nice the black damsels would be if they were in a tank with more docile fish....

Oh, one of the black damsels is probably about 3 inches or so, the bigger one, probably about 5 inches...roughly anyways! The domino is about 4 inches right....which is HUGE compared to the size he was when we got him!

 

I still haven't figured out what the yellow fish is....I've looked at a few books & haven't seen anything quite like him...I'll go through the fish on that website & see what I can find. Thanks for the link I had tried to find a listing of fish, but hadn't had much luck (unless I wanted to look up them up by scientific name & click on each name before I can see a pic!)

Here's a pic of him (not great quality)...any ideas of what category to start in?


What exactly are copepods? Do I just get them from any fish store? I don't really have another tank at the moment to move the goby to...my bigger tank still has gravel in it & from his activity level the last several days, he's definitely better off in the sand. The last day or so, he's actually been having a staring contest with his reflection lol