Luckylou Luckylou
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  • Posted on: 31/1/2015 10:38
Help!! Do I have too many fish? #1
About 3 months ago I helped my son with setting up an 80 litre fish tank. We were both new to this and relied on the expert advice given to us from the shop. We have 2 fan tails and 3 black moors. They have been great until yesterday when one of the black moors and been constantly aggressively chasing one of the fantails. I took to google to search for a reason for this as I am scared he is going to eat it! However I am horrified to find that we seem to have far too many fish for our tank! And this cld be a reason why one chasing the other! I have asked another fish store and they also say 5 is fine. I am getting conflicting info and don't know what to do! Any advice wld be appreciated.
LukeC LukeC
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  • Posted on: 31/1/2015 11:03
Re: Help!! Do I have too many fish? #2
Morning !

I'm afraid your fish shop has given you very bad advice . It's not your fault as it happens a lot ok.

Fancy goldfish can grow up to 8"each. For context, I have 2 fan tails in a 180l tank and they have outgrown it in a year and half! Both are now 7" and still growing.

The minimal tank requirement for one fantail is 140l and each additional fish needs 40l more. For your five fish, you need a tank of 300l !!

Your fish will be increasing stressed as they have outgrown their tank. It's like us being stuck on an overcrowded train. Fish will also start to die in these conditions.

There are plenty of friendly people here can help so you're not on your own!

. If you can get a bigger tank that would be the best thing, but of course that's not always feasible with space, budget etc. The other option is to see if you can re home at least 3 of the fish to give a couple of months to work out if you can have a bigger tank.

Another option is to rehome all 5 and swap to say a group of white cloud minnows or danios. You could even go tropical and have guppies and other smaller fish plenty of exciting options for an 80l tank

Take some time and read the articles here and please feel free to ask as many questions as you like.

I started 2 1/2 years ago with a 48l and only by the help of the lovely people here did I fnally get it right, after making lots of mistakes. I'm now setting up a 400l tank... Fishkeeping is very rewarding and little addictive!!!!!
Luckylou Luckylou
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  • Posted on: 31/1/2015 11:59
Re: Help!! Do I have too many fish? #3
Thanks LukeC! Ok lots of info to process and I now need to work out what the best next step is for the long term so I don't want to rush but really i kind of have to! I'm assuming this needs to change asap like today!?? Also how do I rehome fish, do pet shops take them?
james15 james15
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  • Posted on: 31/1/2015 14:25
Re: Help!! Do I have too many fish? #4
Hi!
Certainly needs to be sorted as soon as you can. Some pet shops might take them, the only way to find out is to ask. When my tropical tank was severely overstocked my local pet shop was really helpful and took a lot of them off my hands.
Do you have a test kit? If not then get one as soon as possible (liquid-based, not strips). With that many fish in there you might need daily water changes to keep the ammonia etc. at a safe level.
johnny n johnny n
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  • Posted on: 4/2/2015 9:52
Re: Help!! Do I have too many fish? #5
You are massively overstocked i'm afraid.

I have got 5 fantails in 200 L , and that is overstocked !(ive got a new tank arriving this week to sort the problem)

A more pressing problem rather than the space, is that the fish will basically be poisoning themselves as they secrete ammonia from their gills, which the filter (if all is established and working well) should then convert into nitrite which is then turned into nitrates.

The nitrates are toxic to the fish if the levels get to high, but are removed from the tank by changing the water.

You should change a large % of the water every day to reduce the toxin level in the water. Treat the new water with dechloriator (something like 'tap safe').

Don't clean the filter in tap water as it will kill the bacterial colonies that convert the ammonia. If it needs a rinse give it a swish in a bucket of old tank water.

The 'API' water test kit is probably the best ?20 you can spend. It takes all of the guess work out of it.

I have to change at least 1/2 the water in my tank every 5 days or so to keep the nitrate level acceptable. The fish have grown from 'end of your thumb' size to length of your hand size in a year and a bit !

I had quite a few that died when I started keeping goldfish, and the rest were really miserable as I had 7 in a 60L biorb (very poor advise from pets at home). The survivors are doing really well now I understand the basics of keeping the water good.

The gist of fishkeeping is you keep the water, not the fish !