Newbie Questions - small simple tank

Hi,

Edit - oops - posted this to coldwater instead of newbie - apologies - too many articles open .....

Like many others who have posted to this forum I am completely new to keeping fish and am looking for some advice.

This is a long post - but the gist of it is are there any good guides to keeping fish in a small simple tank - or is it just a waste of time and cruelty.

I was under pressure from my children (3 and 8) to get some goldfish - so on Saturday last we went to a local pet shop and came away with a 20 litre rectanglar plastic tank, a couple of bags of coloured gravel, a couple of dead dyed ferns with weights, a weighted live plant, a small tub of flake food and 3 small orandas (about 1" excluding tail) and 3 white cloud mountain minnows.

The guy in the pet shop assured me that the fish would be fine and that the tank was big enough for them - he suggested 4-5 orandas - he also said that goldfish (the orandas) limit their growth to their surroundings. His attitude seemed to be that we couldn't go wrong and his only advice was to change some of the water every few days and not to overfeed or leave any uneaten food in the tank - he suggested feeding once every two days. This is a summary, I asked lots of questions but the answers all pretty much came back to 'don't worry - you'll be fine'.

So I went home - put the gravel in the tank - filled it with tap water (drinkable and good quality here) and let it stand for a while - I 'planted' the fake and real plant - after a while I put the plastic bag with the fish into the tank and later transferred the fish (with as little pet shop water as possible).



The fish appeared reasonably active and happy so I decided that I'd better learn a bit about keeping fish as I didn't want to have to explain to the kids some morning why one of their fish was upside down and not moving (asleep ?).

And now I am concerned that I have done pretty much everything wrong.



The first thing that I wanted to clarify was feeding as the tub of food said 2-3 times a day - rather than once every two days !

---- it seems that twice daily is right and at the same time if possible ?

Everybody seems to agree not to leave uneaten food in the tank.

---- but flakes are floating food and it looks as if orandas should be fed sinking food to avoid swim bladder problems

We already have to pick up the occasional rejected and sunken flake - but if the food sinks straight away recovering it looks like a problem - or are there devices for this?


Then I started reading about the nitrogen cycle and realised that these poor fish are going to be tortured for the next number of weeks until the tank is 'cycled' and that we have to do regular partial water changes to try and keep the ammonia down while the bacteria levels rise to deal with it and the nitrites they produce.

Now after a few days and more reading I am even more concerned that what he meant by 'limiting their size to the tank' means that they will be stunted, possibly deformed and will die young in a small tank.

Things still seem fine but the fish do seem to be gulping air from the surface a bit - and I'm not sure whether it is normal behaviour or whether the water is too low in oxygen - naturally I have nothing to measure oxygen, ammonia, nitrites, nitrates or even temperature.




The water seems to be very slightly cloudy - so I am wondering if I have some algae growing in it.

Though rated at 20L the actual water measurements are 15" across, 8" back and 8" high which I calculate as only 15L (or 4 US Gals) - with a surface of about 120 Sq inches.

We're changing 1 litre of water twice or three times daily and leaving the next clean litre standing after each change for the next one.

So some questions :

Is this recoverable or is the tank simply too small no matter what I do ?

- Should I try and add a filter to the tank - and if so what type ?

- Similarly for an airpump to oxygenate the water?

- The weather here (Ireland) is very mild so I am less concerned about temperature - but should I be adding a heater just in case (a cooler definitely won't be necessary, unfortunately!) ?

- what other equipment should I have - measurement tools and what types etc. ?

- The tank is in a north facing room with little direct sunlight and the corner the tank is in never gets any. Do I need a tank light to augment the light or are they just cosmetic?


I'm presuming that what I should be doing is trying to get a larger tank and keeping this smaller one as a standby tank for cleaning etc.

I'm not sure that I can accomodate anything larger than about 15-20 gallons.

I'd appreciate any advice, specifically any pointers to articles about what is practical in a small simple tank and what equipment is necessary for it, both for the current one and for one about 4 times the volume.

I'm not planning to get too seriously into keeping fish, but I'm certainly not going to keep any unless I can do it without torturing them.

One of the best comments I have read in these forums was :

'Bowls are for cereals not for fish'

Which is a bit sobering when I realise that my small tank is not much more than a bowl with corners !

Thanks.

John SL

Here's the plan:

Thank you for these comments and all the other comments in the other fora which have helped me get a good idea of what to do.

Though I'm still not sure I'll get there - seems to me a wonder that anybody manages to keep a small tank or bowl - but I think the answer is that they don't - they just do it for a while and then have no idea why the fish die on them.

Current activity - doing frequent small changes - 1-2 litres 3 times a day - using standing water. Feeding once a day and being careful to try and remove all uneaten food. Things seem stable and the fish seem generally active and normal. They are still gulping air a bit, but not more often than before - but I know that the chemistry must be getting hairy.

Current objective : keep 'em alive until I get to stage one.

Stage One - buy a small filter, buy a small airpump and airstone, buy a thermometer, buy some water treatment for the new water, buy some testers for ammonia, nitrites and nitrites, buy a gravel cleaning siphon, buy some suitable sinking fish food.

Stage one objectives : Keep 'em alive. Try to cycle the tank and see if I can get it stable.

I've ordered some of this online and should have it in a few days and I've plans to visit a different pet shop at the weekend for the rest. It appears to have much more fish related stuff.

Stage Two - get a bigger tank - with the proper equipment - I really have to have a think about this - I'm not sure that the 50+ g that I probably need is going to fit anywhere safe - it's a reasonably large house - but it's already cluttered. But I have a few weeks to think about it. Until the weekend I won't really have an idea how big a 50 g tank is. I can do the maths, but seeing it with its equipment is the reality.

I'd really appreciate any advice that will get me to a cycled tank - if I get the opportunity to get a larger tank earlier I may go for it, but I will still have to cycle it and it seems to me better to try and get this one stable and then build up the larger one properly and cycle it fishlessly.