Timothy E. Raborn wrote:
> "Dr Engelbert Buxbaum" <engelbert_buxbaum@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
> news:cvhrlm$min$04$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>>Timothy E. Raborn wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm having problems adding new fish to my 30 gallon freshwater tank. (I
>>>typically keep guppies and neon tetras in my tank with a pleco or two).
>>
>>Guppies need hard, tetras soft water, so this combination is not very
>>good. Depending on your water params, you should decide on a matching
>>set of fishes.
>
> You're the first person I've ever heard say that guppies and neons were
not
> compatible.
>
In an ideal world, guppies like hard water with some salt and neons like
soft water, as Dr. B mentions above. Your water sounds better for
guppies than neons, but I wouldn't worry too much.
I started thinking - many guppies and neons are sickly when they come to
the stores. Both of these species are mass bred for the hobby, ****pped
too small, and often have poor genetics. This may be why you're having
tank wipeouts. For neons, watch the tanks of neons in LFS and buy from
tanks with big neons that have been in the store for a couple of weeks.
Avoid the tiny ones as they tend to be sickly. As for guppies, see if
you can find a source for locally bred fish. My LFS in Baltimore used
to get tanks of huge, healthy locally bred guppies from a hobby breeder.
Your local aquarium society may also have someone who needs to find
homes for healthier guppies.
<snip>
> Oh brother... Plants would be an entire other topic for me to post on.
I
> have had terrible luck with plants. They look good for about two
months,
> then slowly wither away. The only plant that would grow was
Cobomba(sp?).
> But I swear it must have grown about an inch a day and the more it grew
the
> more "stretched out" the limbs got and it wasn't very pretty. For the
first
> two years of tank owner****p, I spent a small fortune buying new plants
every
> couple of months and did quite a bit of research on how to be successful
> with it. I tried all kinds of techniques to be successful and nothing
> worked. I had even added two Nutrafin CO2 tanks to the tank and that
helped
> a little, but not enough. In the end, I decided that I may not have
enough
> light. The hood that came with the tank will only take up to a 22W, but
I
> can only find 15W lights (fluorescent) to fit it. A calculation I found
> somewhere on the internet indicated that I need about a 60W (was based
on
> the depth of the aquarium). It wasn't feasible for me to change out the
> hood, so that was the point I gave up and stocked up on the fake ones.
They
> look ok, but regardless of what the real plants do for the fish -- I
wanted
> them for aesthetic reasons. They look so much nicer.
>
You're right - 15 watts is nowhere near enough for live plants in a 30
gallon tank. The legginess of the Cambomba is your first clue. And CO2
doesn't help under low light conditions. Your research is right that 60
watts of full spectrum fluorescent light would give good growing
conditions for most plants. However if you can get even 30 watts you
could grow low light plants like Anubias, Cryptocornes, java moss, and
java fern.
--
__ Elaine T __
><__'> http://eethomp.com/fish.html
<'__><
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