Please help me. Any advice is welcome.

[Zbbal]

You are so welcome! I'm glad to help.

Look in the frozen food section and find english peas. Usually there will be smallish packages, maybe 12 oz or so. The frozen ones are better and need to have the skin off and be slightly mushy from the microwave.

You could also get some garlic, either the whole cloves and chop them yourself or the jars of minced garlic (I get that) that they usually have sitting on an end cap in the produce section near the onions and potatoes.

If you nuke an english pea and rub garlic on it, or put some garlic juice from the jar on it, it will be very tempting to your Patootie. Fish love garlic and it is very appetizing to them.

Ask someone at the grocery store for the frozen english peas. I know sometimes I'm searching for something and look right past it until someone points it out. I don't think the canned sallted pea you have tried will hurt him, but I think it's better not to have salted peas for him.

Keep up the good water change schedule. I know you can't test it confidently without your test kit, yet, but assume that his water needs to be changed very frequently.

Until his tank is cycled and has all the beneficial bacteria needed to handle harmful byproducts, and you have the liquid test kit to keep a watchful eye on the parameters, I would do water changes every day, at least 50%, as Lupin suggested.

Pristine water is of utmost importance to his health, especially since he seems to be a little off in his behaviour and this may indicate he's not feeling his best right now.

Ah, I will ask for English peas and get some garlic. The ones I had were frozen as well, but like you said, I think he needs ones that don't have salt. His belly looks a little bloated and -excuse me- his poo is a dark greenish black color, so I'm definitely going to Wal-Mart in the morning. -The joy of living half a mile from Wal-Mart.-

I'm a little scared of changing the water everyday. Patootie is always freaked out after the change. And it can't be the water, because I now know how to get the temperature the same and the water has been treated with the dechlorinator. Anyways, I will try me best to do it daily.

 

[thesixis]

Hey Z
Keep up the good work!!!!
The best part of this great hobby is meeting new people. Just take your time, read, ask questions and HAVE FUN!!!:thm:

 

[Zbbal]

Hey Z
Keep up the good work!!!!
The best part of this great hobby is meeting new people. Just take your time, read, ask questions and HAVE FUN!!!:thm:

Ah, thank you.

 

[corrieberry]

When you do your WC do you have the lights on and music playing etc? I don't know about music so much, but I've found everyone in my endlers tank get really jumpy when I do my WC and turning off all the lights and trying to be as quiet and unobtrusive as possible is one of the ways I keep them calm(er). In a small tank there are fewer places to hide - it probably doesn't help that you are feeling nervous that he is going to get anxious about it so you're possbly overcompensating, or thinking his behaviour is changing. Everyone does that - if you look over in the coldwater section you'll see tonnes of threads by me where I'm stressing about whether or not my fish have parasites etc. It'll take a while, but eventually you'll become so blase about WCs that you'll get it all done in ten minutes and forget that it just happened.

 

[Zbbal]

When you do your WC do you have the lights on and music playing etc? I don't know about music so much, but I've found everyone in my endlers tank get really jumpy when I do my WC and turning off all the lights and trying to be as quiet and unobtrusive as possible is one of the ways I keep them calm(er). In a small tank there are fewer places to hide - it probably doesn't help that you are feeling nervous that he is going to get anxious about it so you're possbly overcompensating, or thinking his behaviour is changing. Everyone does that - if you look over in the coldwater section you'll see tonnes of threads by me where I'm stressing about whether or not my fish have parasites etc. It'll take a while, but eventually you'll become so blase about WCs that you'll get it all done in ten minutes and forget that it just happened.

I don't play any music while doing the water changes, but I do have some lights on. I have to take the aquarium light off to get into the tank, but I have a lamp light I shine in the tank as well as my ceiling fan light. It isn't very bright, though.

And yeah, I'm quite jumpy about water changes. I'm doing 40% water changes a day on the tank, and it's hard to siphon everywhere and not empty the whole tank. I pinch the end of the hose so I can move it, but still, it sucks so fast.

He's still getting used to the siphon being in the tank every morning, but he's slowly adjusting.