It stresses the fish out a lot not to be fed. Some can even die depending on species and how delicate they are. I think that feeder blocks are also a waste of money. They're basically calcium with "food" in them and they just make a mess in my opinion and you can't really use them for fish that require frozen/live foods or that require multiple feedings through the day. Those "gel" ones that Tetra Min (?) makes just breaks apart in chunks and gets your filter all nasty too. I just have someone come over twice/three times a day and feed my fish. Most fish should be fed at least twice a day anyway.

For the "sucker" fish, you can't just rely on them to eat left over foods. A lot of times they starve to death because people don't feed them the food they need. You want to keep in mind that while they are a tank janitor, the other fish often eat all the food before it reaches the bottom of the tank and they should because food on the bottom of the tank can cause water quality issues. You want to feed them things like dark leafy greens and mine always loved zucchini or cucumbers. You just have to take them out after a few hours because they get gross. I used turnip greens or whatever greens my bearded dragons did not eat. I always placed it towards the bottom of the tank with a veggie clip on the side of the tank where the pleco/algae eater hung out most at night then just took it out in the morning since they are nocturnal and eat at night most the time.

Lol Pet store strikes again! I didn't know you were supposed to feed fish twice a day :oops: Is that for all fish? Or only just some? Also I may just try a Pleco again in the near future with that bit of advice! I might actually be able to keep it alive this time. I fed them algae wafers when I had them last time, 1 or 2 per night, but it always seemed like the other fish would eat it before they could get to it :/

Yeah, the wafers tend to be eaten pretty quickly. All fish should at least be fed twice a day. Some species need more when you get into more sensitive fish/critters and saltwater/cichlids. Common freshwater fish that you can go to, let's say PetSmat/Petco and buy only need to be fed twice a day. You just need to watch that you're not overfeeding. As long as there is not food sitting on the bottom of the tank and they're eating it all you should be okay. You really want to feed them as much as they'll eat in a sitting (about 3 minutes) twice a day. Fish are opportunistic feeders and it's healthier for them to have a few meals a day.

I always keep some seaweed or greens in with fish that don't eat meat because they have a shorter digestive tract and smaller stomachs. In the wild herbivores will graze and they don't tend to eat big meals. I do that with fish like African cichlids and yellow tangs. They're technically more herbivores.

You should also never just feed one type of food for any fish because they don't get all their nutrients for optimum health from just one food source. I always switch up foods. The types of food you feed depends on what type of fish you want to keep. There are a lot of choices on the market today for different types of foods.

I've heard that three minute rule before but I didn't know about the twice a day feeding. I feel bad for not feeding my fish now :gonk: It seems there is a lot more to know than my simplistic (almost nonexistant >.o ) knowledge. I don't suppose you could recommend a good book about fish? I'm thinking that would be pretty helpful for me about now...
Oh and I feed them flakes mostly but every few days I feed them crisps and about once a week I put in blood worms

I would switch over to mostly frozen or live blood worms. White worms/glass worms are pretty good for most community fresh water fish too. It simulates their natural food source more than flakes do. I always use frozen and the flakes/crisps as a supplement. I use Omega one brand or Hikari. Both are high quality. I tend to avoid Tetra/Tetra min and off name brands because the quality of the ingedience aren't as high and they contain more fillers.

About.com has a lot of good information as does fishchannel.com. You just have to type in what you want to know in the search on About. Aquariums USA is also a really good magazine as is Tropical fish magazine.

As for basic fish knowledge, PetSmart carries these awesome books that I always used to use as a reference to show costumers fish PetSmart did not carry when I mentioned them. They're called "101 best saltwater fish", "101 best saltwater fish", and "101 best aquarium plants". They tell you the common names of the fish, what size tank they should have, natural range, and personality of the fishes. They also have a nifty section in the front of the book where they recommended what types and how many fish to put in your tanks for a certain themed tank. I love that section because, for example, it has one that's a "quiet amazon pool" tank and it breaks down cichlids into what lakes they are from and suggests what to keep in the tank. They're neat books for a quick reference.

@Mystic - Thank you for the recommendations! I think the flakes I use are Top Fin brand. I'll have to check and see if they have the others you mentioned. I'm gonna see if i can't find those books at petsmart next time I go if for some bloodworms. Or maybe for some new plants. about a month ago I put a tiger barb with an ulcer into my quarinteen tank and put in antibiotics from the store (can't remember off the top of my head what kind) and after about it day it turned the water wine red and killed my fish along with some of the more delicate plants in there :/ I'd never had that happen before. Usually it turns the water green when I put in antibiotics. So I had to take out most of the water in there and then I was just left with 1 or 2 java ferns.

@Princess Cupcake - AHH!! You stay away from my tanks Princess!! :shock:!!!

Top fin is pretty much low end of the line stuff. I personally do not like Top fin anything including filters and tanks because they're so cheaply made. It's PetSmart's brand name fish stuff. PetSmart does carry Omega one and Hikari brands both. For smaller fish (fish under 4 inches) I would also recommend Hikari Micro pellets. They come in a small pouch and are normally hanging in the left hand corner of the shelving units by the algae disks and veggie clips.

Yeah, you have to be careful about copper/sulfa based medications because they will kill plants. Java ferns pretty much live through anything.

Interesting with the feeding twice a day thing, I've never fed twice a day in10 years of having fish, only ever once. My tank will be going soon. The power went off for a second a few days ago and I forgot to check the filter as that tends to stop if there's a hiccup in the power. Two days later one of my black neons was floating on the surface so that's now fertilizing one of my plants :( I can only see the other neon in there now, the scissortail seems to have vanished, poor little guy in there on his own.

He's not looking too healthy either, his colour's fine but he's thin as he's nervous because the tank is empty and I don't think he's been eating properly for ages. I really hate that these last few haven't been in the best of health but there's really not much that I could do about it. It will be a relief when this one dies and I can drain the tank though, I might use that as an opportunity to move my living room around actually.

I do wonder if I could then use the tank as a terranium. I have a wide 3 tier plant stand in my kitchen window, this is because that window is a huge bay and while I'm on the first floor (2nd floor for Americans) people in the upstairs seating area of the Subway on the other side of the road can see straight into my downstairs windows! So I try to block the kitchen window with plants as it's so big. If I put the tank on the top tier of the stand it would certainly block people's view xD and I'd be able to grow things more successfully as it would create its own microclimate in there.

I have a fish bowl, in which lives Aerrow, my beta. xD He's my handsome fishy-boy~
Plays tag with my finger. :]

@Mystic - Lol They do seem to be pretty resilient! And they sprout like crazy. It was like 10 bucks for two of them but I was able to populate my other tanks with them in like 2 months which I was pretty happy about. I haven't had really good luck keeping plants alive that aren't really hearty.
I didn't know that was their brand of products! Unfortunately I just bought a whole huge canister of the topfin brand flakes so I will have to finish using those before I go get some Omega or Hikari food. With those small pellets you were talking about, is it ok to put them in the same tank that have fish over 4 inches? I have a topfin filter in the 10 gallon but when I set up the 29 gallon I went ahead and bought a penguin filter for 30 gallon tanks

@Jellysundae - Lol I know I had no idea about it either!
it's always sad watching the last bit of time an animal has left before it passes on. I live on a farm and we used to raise goats when I was younger and there were a few occasions when we had an elderly goat and you could tell when it was getting close to dying but there wasn't anything else to do for them except feed them and keep taking care of them till it was time.
But on the bright side of things, the end of your fish is the beginning of a new plant terranium! It sounds like a great Idea to me! I always love doing stuff like that. I have probably 20 house plants up in my wing of the house that I take care of. Even though it's been a long time since I did a terranium, I still think creating little micro climates is so much fun :P

@Ezekielle Netzerenne - Betas are so pretty! What color is he?

Yeah, it's okay to feed them to bigger fish but the bigger fish just eat more of them that's why I use them with the smaller fish. Marineland makes pretty good filters. I stick with those or Aquaclears as far as power filters go. Normally for my bigger tanks I just used a canister.

I've been pretty happy with the Marineland products so far. I had a large topfin heater I bought for my big tank early last year and it died after 3 or 4 months. I replaced it with a marineland and it's been going and goin and goin.
Also I just looked in my tank last night and noticed that my angelfish had once again laid eggs. From what I've read I'm pretty sure I have a male and a female because not all of the eggs turn white after the first 2 days and also I've never seen the one I think is a boy laying before. They do this almost every month in different spots around the tank but before they've had enough time to hatch they always eat them after 4 or 5 days. Do they just decide they don't want to have kids after and so eat them? I've asked a few other people but they were never able to give me a real solid answer.

Basically they just look at them as food. They're not very parental fish. I've separated eggs before in net breeders and had success with them. The fry will have to be kept separate too because whatever they can fit int heir mouths they will eat even if it is their own young.

I do really like fish, but large ones make me a little uncomfortable. I can't have any where I live now, but I'd like to get some bettas; they're my favorite. I had two when I lived at my grandma's house, but they died some time after I moved. :c

@Mystic - Ah I gotcha. I didn't know you had to separate the eggs from the parents to get them to hatch. Well I'll just leave it be for now. I don't know what I'd do with a tank full of baby angel fish! Also I checked out Petsmart for those 101 books the other day when I went to get some long fin red minor tetras for my fluval edge tank. I picked up the one on freshwater fish for now. It has some good info in them! Thanks for directing me to them.

@Glitter Golgotha - Personally I like the fish that don't get to be much bigger than 5 or 7 inches. I like the idea of creating a tank community that supports a bunch of smaller fish vs. one or two big fish. I like bettas a lot too. When I had my first 10 gallon set up 2 years ago I had this really pretty female betta that was purple and red and blue. She was probably my oldest fish from that tank but she ended up getting droopsy after about a year and then she died. I still want to get another one sometime. They have such a pretty shape and their colors are really amazing too.

@xRhii - Nice! Sounds like you had some good tank systems going there. if I ever end up moving I will have to find some way to take my fish with me where I go. I would be really sad if I had to sell them off :( Also you're betta's name is cute :) I hope you get more fish soon!

I would avoid minor tetras or tetras that get over an inch. They'll just stress out. Minors get up to 2 inches so you'll need at lest 2 gallons of water per fish and they're schooling so you'd need 6-8 of them. I personally don't keep them in anything less than a 20 for that reason. I love them for planted tanks though since they do not bug anything. Might I suggest some glowlights or neons?

I'm back! Power was off here for me and 1400 other people last night so no internet :/
Oh, I was always told (by petsmart... lol) that schooling fish were ok in groups of three but I might just take them and put them in a ten gallon tank. They are pretty small for now though so I have some time before they get too big to deal with. How come they stress out when they get over an inch? Now I'm worried about the biggest of my glowlite tetras :shock: he's like an inch and a half long.
I saw in a book on different types of aquarium tank environments, a dark cave set up. It looked soo cool! it had lava rock walls all around the back and sides of the tank so that you could only see through the front and then it had lighting hitting the sides of the walls where they protruded and the rest was all shadowed. They had some neat looking blind fish to go in it too.

Spock! That's awesome :P Aw that's too bad :( Sorry they all died. I hate it when that happens. I hope you get to get some more some time! I think they are just a lot of fun =3

Well today is tank cleaning day! If I can remember to I'll take pictures after I'm done!

You want for every inch of adult fish one gallon of water. Minors get about 2 inches so you'd need 2 gallons of water per fish. Tetras do better in groups of 6-8 and shouldn't be kept in smaller schools because they're more likely to stress out. People at PetSmart don't really know what they are talking about although my associates were pretty well informed for the most part and actually wanted to know about the pets we sold.

The one gallon of water per inch of adult fish only works with small community fish. It doesn't work when you get up to fish like, let's say an oscar that gets a foot. You don't want to keep a 12 inch fish in a 12 gallon tank especially with a high bioload.