Fish Water

We (Barb and I) bought a fish aquarium and a bunch of fish(12 to be exact) a few months ago. I have to admit I knew very little about taking care of fish. The only other fish I ever had was a small goldfish when I was a youngster.

So we had our fish a few days and one of them died. There happened to be a guarantee that came with the fish that said the store would replace them if one of them died within I think 7 days after purchase. So I took the little fellow back to the store with a sample of the water it was in(part of the requirement for warranty). The nice fellow at the store tested the water and told me it had way too much ammonia in it. I asked what I could do to get rid of it and he suggested that it was either overstocking or not enough filtration. Well, we had looked online about how many fish we could put in our 20 gallon aquarium and it said that a general guideline was 1" of fish for each gallon of water in the aquarium. As most of the fish we bought were small we figured it was good.

Well, I waited a few more days and took another sample back and what do you know, it was too high in ammonia also. We tried a partial water change and a few other things, but a couple more fish ended up not making it. We even tried a chemical that was supposed to help get rid of ammonia and that didn't seem to do the trick either.

We bought a monitor thing that was supposed to tell us instantly if there was ammonia in the water and sure enough it registered high for it again.

So, we are down to 7 fish now. Just the other day, we did another partial water change(we had been doing that on a regular basis anyway) and bought a real test kit to check the ammonia level. Lo and behold, the ammonia problem seems to have vanished. The water is where it should be now. So, hopefully our fish can live in peace without having to suffer any ill consequences. This made us very happy indeed.

Just thought I'd blog about it lol. TIll next time BYE!!