# Ok, so if first you don't succeed....



## MsNaFew (May 1, 2011)

Hello to all, brand new member, both to this forum and to breeding and raising fancy guppies. I got into this hobby when I was er...ahem...much younger than I currently am, and as that was the age we still wrote upon stone tablets, much of the info I thought I retained, was either forgotten or blown away with child birth, c-sections and Morphine. You get the idea.

Anyway, to make a very long, drama filled story short, I just recently got back into the hobby, as a bonding experience with my 7 year old son, who shares my 'Mexican Jumping Bean Disorder" ( ADHD), as his interest in tropical fish began to bloom, and as a way to de-stress after taking care of vent dependent infants.

So, we did. I read up on all I could find on guppies, tanks, setting up tanks, fish-less cycling, etc. I followed the recommendations, made my purchases and my son and I sat back and watched as 3 females had their first drops, almost at the same time. Joy. My son was ecstatic, as was I, having never forgotten the amazement of watching these li'l fish wiggle out live fry.

All was well. Until 2 days later, a 25% water change and a loss of all the fry and 2 out of the 3 females. Hmmm....So, I throw myself upon those of you far more knowledgeable than myself and beg for your patience, and advice.

I'm learning, the more I read, the tips and shortcuts and DIY things that've made me smack my forehead in frustration and whine that if I had only known. I could've saved myself quite a bit of time, money, and worry. I invested in things I should've and didn't in many things that I should've. Such is life. sigh....

So! Asleep yet? Bear with me, you will be. Here is my set up:

*1* 20 gal with a Penguin Bio wheel filter ( HOB ) with an air pump, air stone and heater, housing a trio of Black Moscows, a pair of Half Black Reds ( I lost the other female ) and a pair of Half Black Pastels, along with an albino cat and pleco. 

*1* ten gal with Penn Plax HOB filter, heater, air pump and air stone.This is/was my nursery tank for the fry drops, now waiting to be emptied and cleaned out thoroughly.

*1 *yet to be used 10 gal tank, starting cycle tomorrow ( my grow out tank, or so I had planned anyway) 

*One* 1 gal ( figured it to be a hospital tank ) with heater, air pump, filter, and air stone, up and cycling.
All filter intakes are netted, as to try to prevent dead fry, of-course.

Now. I KNOW I've got a mix match of what should be a good set up, have gone about things haphazard, so *what* is the most SIMPLE, BASIC, EASY set up I can do, with the equipment I DO have? I consider myself a reasonably intelligent woman, I mean I DID manage to get through life fairly well until now. I'm confused. I obviously have made some very common and classic mistakes, hey, at least I ADMIT it! LOL :chair:

My plan was to start a itty bitty tiny breeding/raising guppies hobby. I didn't know I suffer from 'Newbie Syndrome" and "MTS" habit. I KNOW that there's an easier way to streamline and expedite this process, using the equipment I already have, but I have yet to figure it out. I'm making it much more difficult likely, than it should be.

And there you have it. Those of you who aren't nodding off or idly wondering if this post will EVER end, I beg of you. Ideas? Suggestions? Comments? "Go away, you crazy loon"?

Thanks in advance, to those of you kind enough to reply.


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## humdedum (Feb 18, 2009)

Welcome back to the hobby!  

The 20 gallon setup sounds good: good filter, good equipment. Does it have gravel or plants at all? If it were my operation, I would keep the adults in the 20. I would use one of the 10-gals for a birthing and fry grow tank. I would use the second 10-gal as a quarantine/hospital tank. The way you manage things might be different than me, though, so it's your decisions. 

A word of warning, though, those different strains of guppy will definitely have no qualms with interbreeding, and you may lose some of those special traits...if you just want pet guppy fry, though, it'll be of no worry. 

A 25% water change is a normal amount, pretty much, for a WC. Did you de-chlorinate the water and make it roughly the same temperature? Frequent water changes are _good_ for growing fry...at least they should be!

The pleco may outgrow that 20 gallon. The common species usually grow quite large and may require something closer to 40 or 50 gallons. On the more positive side, any dead fry can be eaten up by him. Ideally, the cory should have at least three of four other cory cats. 

You're walking on rainbows and unicorns compared to my attempt at a small platy breeding operation when I was younger!  Don't fret or beat yourself up over mistakes, just learn from them and next time you could save even more money. Who knows how much money (er...my parents money, heh heh) I've wasted on useless fish products!

Hope this helps, at least a little, and ask as many questions as you need! :fish:


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## MsNaFew (May 1, 2011)

Hi Humdedum, and thank you for the warm welcome and suggestions. I'm here to learn, so as far as I see it, any suggestions are welcomed. We;;...maybe with the exclusion of my age. 

Yes, I dechlorinate the water, make sure it's a really close in temp and do a very ssloww change and re-fill, ( think drip, drip, drip ) so as to not stress the fish. I forgot to add, (sorry, long day ) the different strains are divided within the 20 gal, I want to keep the strains as true as possible. Sp the Pleco is on one side of the tank, the albino Cory on the far end of the other divider.

LOL, uh...yep, knew the Pleco is likely to outgrow the 20 gal. entirely ok with me, as it just makes my argument for a 30 gal or larger, that much stronger. hehe 

"You're walking on rainbows and unicorns compared to my attempt at a small platy breeding operation when I was younger! Don't fret or beat yourself up over mistakes, just learn from them and next time you could save even more money. Who knows how much money (er...my parents money, heh heh) I've wasted on useless fish products!" 
Really?! I figured I would be this evening's amusement to those of you experienced hobbyists out there.  Glad I'm not. Thank you, so much for the great suggestions and fishy FYI's.


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## MsNaFew (May 1, 2011)

Whoops! Long day indeed, as I keep forgetting to answer what you've asked!

Anyway, the 20 gal has gravel, and weighted down as well as, floating plastic plants and greenery.

The ten gal is bare bottom with the same type of weighted and floating greenery-plastic in both tanks. Sorry about that!


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

Hmm. killer water change. Usually means I forgot dechlor or miscalculated the dose of an additive. But it could be a drastically lower pH/hardness or salinity, a contaminated bucket or hose (No, you may not use my bucket for ant killer! Oh, you already did), or the water company switched from chlorine to chloramine and the dechlor released ammonia, or ...


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## funlad3 (Oct 9, 2010)

I added about a gallon of dechlorinated tap water into my SW as top off water. It lowered everyone's immune systems (except fot the corals!) and now they're getting sick with a mystery sickness.

The on topic response would be that fry are more sensitive to water quality than adults, so if anything in their water changes, they'll let you know.



"No, you may not use my bucket for ant killer! Oh, you already did"

Thanks emc7. That made me smile.


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## MsNaFew (May 1, 2011)

Good morning emc7 and thank you for replying!

Uh....oh....Hmmm....out here, in Ky ( my part of it anyway ) we were blasted last week and the week before, with torrential rain ( 5 inches in 24 hours ) and storms, tornadoes, and are still flooded like you wouldn't believe. I'm considering throwing bass into our front yard, putting up a pay lake sign and being done with it. I wonder if the water company had to add extra whatever to our water, to make sure it was safe?

Who knows? As the whole bucket and/or line contamination is also a definite possibility and one I hadn't even thought of. Around here, *anything's* possible, as I've come to the conclusion that I'm Murphy's Law personified. 

The only thing I can be positive of is this. I did add the right chemicals and that I *didn't* check the pH. ( embarrassed chuckle ) I've been pretty well done in these days, with a patient even more determined to give me white hair than my son's delighted, " Hey Mom, watch THIS!" statements, usually signifying a daredevil stunt and a possible need for an ER trip. LOL

Thank you, I do suppose the possibilities on what went wrong are quite a few, with human error on the top of the list. All I know is that all were fine until I did the WC. And that my son blames me. hehe And the loss hurt ( 100 fry and 2 really awesome females )

Should I completely dismantle, clean ( no detergent, 1 part bleach to 10 parts water is what I've read ) and reassemble, sigh, and start from scratch with regards to this tank? Yee and Haw. Thank you for replying to my ever increasing discomfort that the fish loss is ahem...my fault. Guess I'm going to learn the hard way, huh?


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## MsNaFew (May 1, 2011)

Hiya funlad 3, 

Ooookkkkaaaayyyyy. The plot thickens as my ignorance shows. Um....Stress Coat. I added that to the um....water along with an extra dose of de-chlor, thinking I had to be extra careful with the fry and females as they were recuperating. ( bright red face ) not such a good thing?

Yep the bucket and ant killer sounds so much like my own statements to my son and guy. Some of my others run like this. " Hun, ( my guy ) sitting in the living room and watching TV and having gas just encourages my son ", or, " Hey! I NEVER said you could use the cat as a live target with your new Super Soaker!' ( my son )

Thank you all, for replying. As for suggestions to make things easier, flow better, streamlined....any suggestions? I really do feel as though I'm making everything harder than it should be!


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

Water companies will double or triple dose chlorine when they've had problems (like sewage in the source water from flooding) or they will go out and buy water from a different system with totally different parameters. Bleaching and starting over is recommended when a disease is suspected. If it was just the water, a big (maybe even 100%) water change will do the trick. The difficultly lies in finding safe water. I usually don't recommend chemical methods like ammo-carb, but if you can't/won't change enough water, something that just takes ammonia out can help. (the tank won't cycle, so you have to keep using the chemical method). It could be the water change timing was a coincidence and you simply didn't change enough water to deal with the inevitable post-feeding ammonia spike. Its easy for a adults to overfeed fry, add a child and its about a certainty. I've know kids that will feed exactly the right amount, 200 times a day. Even properly fed, fast-growing fry in new tanks often make more waste than their filter can handle right away.


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## MsNaFew (May 1, 2011)

Ah! The light bulb over my head's beginning to flicker. LOL The weather has been awful, even for us in Ky. where if you don't like the weather just wait 5 minutes...it'll change. Well, except for here lately, when the forecast is discouraginly the same. My plants 
( yeah....I garden and well but when it comes to live plants in my tanks? um....nope )

The fry were born the very first night we had tornado sirens blaring, weathermen jumping up and down, and bow echos. I changed the water like the good hobbyist I'm *supposed* to be, 2 1/2 days later. to make it worse, where we live? The theme of dueling banjos is playing and ******** shout "Yeah", for no particular reason I can figure, being a city transplant. Upshot is? Lateral sewer lines and septic tanks. Ding, ding, ding! We got a.... "*Newbie!*"

As for my son, he pleads the fifth. He feeds the main tank and 'his' tank but knowing him as I do? Yeah, temptation would be knockin' on his door....so it's entirely possible, especially when it involves my son and myself! 

One other odd thing. The two females that died? Had the most agressive fin rot I've ever seen. It appeared the day after the fry loss, I had removed the fry, no more wc, and no temp fluctuations, filter running like a top, well as good as HOB can, and they were gone the very next. Literally fine and suddenly coated, I mean *coated* in white on fins and tail only, and then just...gone in less than 12 hours, despite ( okay this may be another mistake ) administering a dose of Fungal something, some company that does Lifeguard ( can't remember, very, very tired ) and removing filter media carbon for an hour.

I scroowed it all up didn't I? sigh....


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