50 Ways to Kill Your Fish: Improper Habitat

How to explain this one? I think all new fish keepers generally know that fish need food and clean water to survive. But beyond that, it's kind of a mystery why things die. Maybe there aren't any obvious signs like white spots or wounds. Your fish just slowly gets lethargic over time, stops swimming around, doesn't feel like eating, and then poof, it's gone. This silent killer is known as improper living conditions. In order to fight against its deadly trap, let's talk about a couple of key tenets for setting up a comfortable habitat for your fish.

Try to Replicate Your Fish's Natural Living Conditions

We've all seen those extensive care sheets for each type of fish where they list recommended tank size, temperature, food, etc. While many fish have been raised in captivity for so long that there's some leeway with the requirements, try to match the natural living conditions and environment of the species you keep. We want to emulate their life in nature as best as we can.

That's not to say that you have to make a full-on South American biotope that only contains creatures from that region. The cool thing about aquariums is the very fact you have flexibility to mix-and-match fish from all around the world. However, one of the best pieces of advice I've heard from veteran fish keepers is to plan your tank around your favorite fish.

For my community tank 3.0, I felt so overwhelmed when planning which fish to keep. Should I narrow it down by swimming level to get a good mix of bottom feeders, mid-tank swimmers, and top-dwellers? Or maybe I should first choose a temperature range of super warm, regular tropical, or cold water? In the end, I nailed down my favorite, must-have fish (albino corydoras!) and planned the whole tank around their ideal needs. That meant buying a healthy school of them and skipping out on more aggressive fish that might out complete them for food. And in the end, I'm really happy with my choices – because I put my favorite fish first!

Don't Push the Boundaries as a Beginner

I'm totally guilty of this, especially when it comes to matching the living conditions for multiple species. I really, really want something to work (even if the research says "probably not"), but I don't have the experience to make it succeed. For example, my first betta was in a 3.5-gallon tank, and I was so proud of all the amenities he had (e.g., filter, heater, good food). But when I found out bettas can be kept in community tanks, I become obsessed with getting more fish but... I didn't want to buy another tank. So I kept searching the internet until I found one site that said they had kept their betta with cory catfish and neon tetras in a 3-gallon tank. Yeah, that didn't work out for long.

Another instance was when I read that albino cory catfish like waters at 72-79°F and German blue rams prefer 78-85°F. I thought that maybe if I kept the temperature at 78.5°F, everyone would be happy. Unfortunately, the super sensitive German blue ram didn't agree with me and slowly faded from the stress of being too cold. After watching a video about a breeder of rams, I now realize a solid 84°F would have been more appropriate.

"Dude, I'm freezing to death in here! Crank up the heat!"

Bottom line: do what it takes to make your animals happy. If care sheets for axolotls say they can live in temperatures from 50-74°F, don't settle for room temperature – spend the money to get a fan or chiller and shoot for the mid 60's. And if you can't make certain conditions happen with your setup, then don't keep those species. (For example, fish that need soft water aren't going to thrive in my extremely hard water, especially without an RO/DI unit.) There are plenty of aquarium fish to pick from that will perfectly match your environment, so as a beginner, keep it simple and go for easy, hardy pets that you know you can make happy. Best of luck and keep on swimming!

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50 Ways to Kill Your Fish: Crowded Tank

If you post an online picture of a beautiful hobbyist-owned aquarium packed full of fish, you'll probably get several reactions:

1. OMG, that is the coolest thing I've ever seen! (＾▽＾)
2. OMG, that is the cruelest thing I've ever seen! ((╬◣﹏◢))
3. OMG, how did they accomplish that? I must know! ლ(ಠ_ಠ ლ)

That's because there are sooo many differing opinions on how many fish in a tank is too many. Asking "How many fish can I keep in my aquarium?" is like asking "How many cats can I keep in my house?" – it totally depends on each person's preferences and lifestyle.

Clearly, five cats is not enough. You need at least six in a school or else they start getting nippy.

Huge props to the Real Fish Talk: How Much Is Too Much? video for breaking it down like this:

The more fish you have,
The more food they eat,
The more waste they create,
The more work you have to do to keep the tank clean.

In other words, more fish = more time you'll have to invest to maintain them and keep them healthy. My idea of fun is enjoying my fish without having to change their water more than once a week, so if that's not achievable, I probably have too many fish or something else needs to change. (I'm not lazy; I'm just low maintenance...) For example, I once tried to keep two axolotls in a 20-gallon tank, which was fine when they were juveniles. However, the larger they got, I found myself doing daily water changes to keep up with the huge waste load. (No one told me these things lay giant doggy turds!) Clearly, I had one too many axolotls in that tank and I was no longer enjoying my hobby as much as I wanted.

"Welcome back to Survivors: Axolotl Edition! Who will get voted off the island in this episode?"

When it comes to deciding how many fish are going into an aquarium, I like to plan rather than impulse buy. The AqAdvisor aquarium stocking calculator is a nice starting point for beginners. You enter your tank size, filter brand, and a list of fish, and the website spits out recommendations on compatibility and how "full" your tank is. Then you slowly start adding fish and regularly test the tank water every few days to see how clean it stays over time. (For freshwater parameters, people usually like to see 0 ppm in ammonia and nitrites and maybe 40 ppm or less of nitrates.)

Case in point: here's the step-by-step plan of action for building my community tank 3.0:

1. Research different combinations on fish and stocking levels using caresheets and AqAdvisor.
2. Set up and cycle my display tank with live plants and biological filter media.
3. While it's cycling, buy my favorite fish first (cory catfish) and put them in quarantine.
4. Six weeks later, move the cory catfish in the display tank and buy my second favorite fish (dwarf gourami).
5. While he's in quarantine, regularly test the main aquarium's water to determine how often I need to do water changes.
6. In another six weeks, rinse and repeat step 3 with my next favorite fish and so on.

As long as the water parameters stay stable without me having to do more than one water change a week (my personal limit due to time constraints), then I'm happy with the number of fish I have. If at some point, the water quality starts dipping because I'm overstocked, then we have a few options:

• Do more frequent water changes
• Rehome some fish
• Buy a bigger tank
• Increase the amount of water volume in the system by installing a large sump or canister filter
• Add more biological filtration like live plants (especially fast growing ones that absorb lots of fish waste)

Fans of live plants often recommend having a ton more greenery than fish to avoid overstocking issues, so I may give that a shot this time around. Good luck to all of us and keep on swimming!

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50 Ways to Kill Your Fish: Impatience

This is a hard lesson to learn. When you first begin the hobby, it's so exciting and you just want beautiful fish in your aquarium now now now. You already went through the trouble of cycling your tank, so finally it's time to go on a huge fish shopping spree, right? Right?

Patience is key. Don't rush things. You hear that over and over again on the forums, but... I don't think there's really any way to comprehend how much waiting fish keeping requires until you kill a buncha fish and walk through that depression. Here are three real-life stories how I inadvertently killed my fish with impatience:

1) Quarantining multiple fish from different sources

"Hobbyist mediated pandemic" was a phrase I first heard from this awesome video on keeping discus. As soon as the speaker described the issue, I was shocked to discover the huge mistake I had been making. Nobody had ever told me this was wrong! You see, I was always diligent about quarantining new fish, but like many excited newbies, I was buying fish from multiple stores and quarantining them all together...

For example, I once purchased some marbled hatchetfish and put them into quarantine. A week later I decided to add one more neon tetra to my existing school, so I plopped the new guy in with the hatchetfish. Nothing wrong with that, right? Unbeknownst to me, the hatchetfish had ich that didn't show up during their two weeks in quarantine (also due to my impatience), and the neon tetra promptly caught it and was one of the first casualties. (╥_╥)

The problem is that fish from different sources will harbor different kinds of pathogens. By throwing creatures from three different pet stores together in quarantine, you're significantly upping your chances that someone's carrying something bad that's going to infect everyone.

Here's what to do instead: take your time, go to one shop to buy fish, quarantine them, and after they're fully done with quarantine, go to another shop to pick up more. Don't try to speed things up by overlapping quarantine times – patience.


Yes, this is proof of me creating the perfect storm for a "hobbyist mediated pandemic."

2) Buying new fish and returning them

This is basically a case of me horribly abusing the pet store return policy. (⇀‸↼‶) After my first community tank crashed, I started planning my perfect aquarium version 2.0 that combined a peaceful group of fish with a colorful male betta as the centerpiece. But it's hard to know if you're going to get a nice or naughty betta. So, while I was only buying from the same store, I was constantly mixing and matching different community fish and bettas in quarantine to see if I could find a combination where they all got along. And if there was aggression, then I would either return the bully or the victim. Yeah, don't do that.

Changing up roommates in rapid succession is very stressful, so make your decision and live with it. Or at the very least, slow down the exchange of fish (which means you can't rely on the return policy for buyer's remorse). Fully complete the quarantine process before adding new animals or rehoming them. This gives the fish time to get used to their unfamiliar environment, eat well, and build up their immunity again.

3) Making decisions when stuff is still unresolved

At one point, my melanoid axolotl Kalameet was in a hospital tank because he wasn't eating and seemed to have bad bloating in his stomach. I was tired of looking at an empty tank and started envisioning changes I wanted to make for his "homecoming." Maybe I could get a hardy java fern to replace the anubias congensis he had accidentally squashed. Maybe I could start quarantining some shrimp or white cloud mountain minnows to breed and serve as roommates/snacks. I had it all planned out and ready to execute, but.... God held me back. I know it's going to sound weird, but He told me to wait seven weeks before I bought any extra plants or feeder species. So I grumpily agreed. And you know what? That call for extra patience was correct. Despite my best efforts, Kalameet took a turn for the worse and passed away a few days later.

Back in the day, when Kalameet was happily crushing the poor anubias congensis

As sad as that story is, I'm so glad God asked me to take a pause. I already had the arduous task of tearing down and cleaning out Kalameet's tank, but at least I wasn't also loaded down with a bunch of minnows that I no longer needed. And not having the extra fish to take care of now means that I've been afforded a new opportunity – the freedom to choose whether I want to keep more fish, stick with axolotls, or quit the hobby all together. As of today, my seven weeks is still not up, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. I'll keep you updated as I continue blogging about my fish keeping journey.

Question:
What do you think I should do – keep community fish, get another axolotl, or move on? Let me know in the comments below.

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50 Ways to Kill Your Fish: Uncycled Aquarium

Don't Panic About Aquarium Cycling!

Despite being a habitual researcher, I balked at learning about the aquarium cycle. It's because everyone made it sound so tedius! They would immediately dive into complex chemical terms and scientific names, and it made my eyes roll into my head in boredom. Here's the very simple, "Cycling for Dummies" explanation...

What Does Cycling an Aquarium Mean?

It means your fish or other aquatic animals have the ability to live in an aquarium without dying in their own waste (like ammonia and urea). This can be accomplished in several ways:

1. Do frequent water changes to manually remove the waste. 
2. Grow beneficial bacteria that will convert the fish waste into a less toxic chemical, which buys you more time between water changes.
3. Use live plants (or algae) that will directly uptake ammonia and convert it into new leaves and plant growth.

Note: That means that putting water in your tank and letting it sit without fish for a week will not cycle your tank (been there, done that). Cycling is a means of removing ammonia, not aging water. Also, plecos and other bottom dwellers do not eat poop; they make it. :)

What is the Best Method of Cycling My Aquarium?

This is a totally a matter of opinion, so I'll tell you my story. When I first started researching aquarium cycling, the most popular method people on the internet recommend is method #2, specifically using fishless cycling to grow beneficial bacteria. This involves pouring liquid ammonia (aka fake fish waste) into your tank as a food source for the bacteria and then waiting till you grow enough bacteria to consume the ammonia. Since I did not have a source of beneficial bacteria to kick start the growth in my tank, a couple of months passed without anything happening so I gave up. (And apparently this is not uncommon.)

The next thing I tried was fish-in cycling, which means putting a very small number of fish in your tank and growing beneficial bacteria off their waste. Unlike using liquid ammonia, having actual fish poop is a surefire way that bacteria will come. I used two cory catfish in a 20-gallon tank, fed them lightly, and carefully monitored the water parameters. Contrary to popular belief, they thrived without incident and naturally grew beneficial bacteria over the course of several weeks.


Unfortunately, after a couple of encounters with disease, I had to wipe out all my good bacteria with the bad when sanitizing my aquarium. That's when I discovered the miracle of live plants. I'd always used fake plants before because a) live plants seemed difficult and b) I hated the algae problems that seemed to come with them. However, aquascaped tanks full of foliage looked so beautiful, so I decided to give it a shot with my nano tank. There are many super easy low-light aquarium plant species that can be tied to a rock and basically treated like a fake plant. The difference was incredible though. I did an experiment to see how long I could go without changing the water, and even a month later, ammonia and nitrites were still 0 ppm and the nitrate levels were only 5 to 10 ppm! Σ(°ロ°) That never happened in my tanks with no plants and beneficial bacteria only. Surprisingly, using live plants for biological filtration seems to be one of fastest ways to cycle your aquarium (assuming you're starting from scratch like I was).

All the java fern and anubias plants are tied onto rocks or décor that are easily moved for cleaning.

Bottom line: how does nature clean up fish poop? It gets washed away or diluted (method #1) from rain and other water sources, and bacteria and plants (methods #2 and 3) break it down as food. I highly recommend using all three methods to keep your fish happy and your water clean.

P.S. A huge thanks to Aquarium Co-Op's video that covers this subject more in-depth. I just discovered Cory's YouTube channel and I really appreciate how he speaks from his own experiences, not just what is repeated on the internet.

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50 Ways to Kill Your Fish: Buy Sick Fish

This advice may sound obvious, but buy the healthiest fish you can. When you go to the pet store, don't let the employee choose any ol' fish that ends up in the net. I used to stand in front of the shop tanks and stare at the fish forever until I was sure of which ones I wanted... the most lively, engaging, beautiful creatures possible!

What Are the Signs of a Healthy Fish? (aka How Can I Tell If My Fish Is Sick?)

It can really depend on the species, but here are some general guidelines of what to look for:

• Appetite: Healthy fish are always looking for food, so loss of appetite is one of the first telltales that something's wrong. Don't be afraid to ask an employee to feed the fish as proof of their hunger. This is especially useful for species that are notoriously picky eaters.
• Swimming Ability: You should be able to immediately spot any fish that are having difficulty swimming, can't stay upright, or keep bumping into things.
• Energy Level: Lethargic fish with no energy can be a sign of illness (or they could be sleeping). Conversely, swimming quickly or erratically can be a sign of distress.
• Breathing: Look out for fish that keep gasping for air at the surface or have unusually rapid gill movement. 
• Outlier Behavior: Remember that Sesame Street game "One of these things is not like the other"? Yeah, don't pick the oddball. If this fish is alone and it's supposed to be schooling fish, just say no. If it's hovering near the water surface or sitting at the bottom (and that's not usual for the species), then beware. If it's an overly aggressive fighter or an overly shy wallflower hiding behind the filter for a long time, it may be way stressed out.
• Imperfections: This isn't a comprehensive list, but some common signs include...
• Wounds: ragged or white burns on fins and tail, short barbels, holes, missing scales
• Discoloration: faded color, white patches, cloudy eye, stress bars, inflamed gills
• Parasites: white or gold spots, worms in poop or gills
• Deformities: scales that don't lay flat (like a pine cone), swollen eyes, crooked back or tail

I'll give you an example. Our new turquoise and yellow betta suddenly died while in quarantine, so I wanted to replace him with another turquoise and yellow betta. There was a beautiful one that looked very similar to our original fish, but he just seemed... not very responsive. I know bettas in cups don't have a lot of room to move, but still. On the other hand, there was another all-blue betta who wasn't maybe as striking, but was very responsive and lively. I chose to go with personality and health over appearance, and I'm happy to say he's just as dynamic and charming as the day we got him. (o˘◡˘o)

In the King of DIY's How to Keep Discus video, the speaker recommends starting with obviously healthy stock because a poor quality fish will not magically turn into a beautiful specimen. That advice of course all depends on your goals in fish keeping. There are some people who like to rescue sickly bettas (or other animals) from stores or friends. There are numerous amazing transformation pictures posted online, so good care can definitely go quite a ways. However, just be aware that if you choose to go that route, that's no guarantee of success because you are starting off at a disadvantage. It's going to take a lot of effort, time, and money to potentially bring your patient back from the brink of death.

I always enjoy seeing successful betta rescue transformations. (Source: Reddit)

Picking happy, healthy creatures is going to give you the best leg up in, well, not killing your fish. Hopefully now you'll know what to look out for. Good luck and keep on swimming!

50 Ways to Kill Your Fish: No Quarantine

Quarantining new fish seems like very obvious, super newbie advice, right? I mean, who doesn't quarantine? Look, I too read the manual, heard the warning signs, and obeyed the law. However, despite quarantining every fish, invertebrate, and plant that entered our house, I still managed to cause deaths. How is that possible? Let me give you three ways you may be incorrectly quarantining your fish:

1) Don't Use Your Display Tank for Quarantine

Some people say that if you're setting up your display aquarium for the first time, it's fine to just directly add in your new fish for "quarantine." Don't do it! The whole point of quarantine is to keep your new creatures away from the main tank to prevent cross-contamination. Ideally, the quarantine tank should be in a completely separate room from any display tanks since germs can travel through air and water particles.

If your fish get sick while being quarantined in your main tank, it can pretty expensive to medicate the entire aquarium (compared to a smaller quarantine tub). Plus, you may have to bleach everything in the tank, throw out whatever can't be disinfected, and start the beneficial bacterial cycle again. It's not worth your time and money! Treat your main display tank like Fort Knox and don't let anything nearby that doesn't have the proper security clearance.

My story is that I put two new albino corydoras straight into my main tank as the first residents and then a couple of days later, I added a third one to slowly increase the size of their school. I figured since they all went in around the same time, they could be in "quarantine" together. The third cory catfish started acting listless and eventually died a few days later. I freaked out and realized that a) my other two catfish might also die and b) the whole tank was exposed to whatever the dead fish had and I had no idea how to disinfect an entire tank. Luckily, the third catfish did not have any infectious diseases and the first two corydoras escaped unscathed.

2) "But the Fish Were Already Quarantined by the Seller"

Trust no one. Not even your friend swears that the fish he's giving you are disease-free. Not even that super reputable seller who already quarantines any fish she imports. It may sound overly cautious, but a) people lie and b) fish can get stressed from shipping and handling. Stress lowers a fish's immunity and can bring out diseases in normally healthy specimens, so it's better to be safe than sorry!

3) Don't Use a Hard-to-Clean Quarantine Tank

Don't quarantine fish in a planted aquarium or other setup that is difficult to clean. In my case, I had an empty planted nano tank and decided to quarantine a pregnant balloon molly in it since my quarantine tank was already occupied. Once the fry were born, I scooped them up into a breeder box that I put in my bigger main aquarium. Yeah, turns out the mama molly had columnaris and, via her infected fry, spread it to my entire community of fish. (╥_╥) To make matters worse, I didn't realize the mama molly was sick when she died.  So I put my replacement male molly in the nano tank without cleaning anything because, well, it's hard to disinfect live plants. Guess what the male molly died of?

Get a basic quarantine tank that only needs a filter, heater (for tropical fish), thermometer, and hiding spot.

Bottom line: make your quarantine system very easy to setup, disinfect, and tear down. My current quarantine system is super simple and consists of the following:

• Clear plastic tub with a lid (good against jumpers and evaporation)
• Internal filter
• Polyfil stuffing (cheap, disposable filter media)
• Heater (the adjustable temperature allows you to raise or lower the heat to best treat the illness)
• Thermometer
• Siphon (this one should only be used with the quarantine system)
• Fake plant decor (for fish to hide in)

For the clear plastic tub, I marked up the side with the number of gallons to help with accurate medication dosing. I also drilled holes in the lid for air and electrical cords to pass through.

I don't use cycled filter media because many times the medication I'm using is going to kill the beneficial bacteria anyways. I just cram the filter with polyfil stuffing for mechanical filtration and toss the polyfil afterwards to avoid future contamination. With an uncycled quarantine system, frequent water changes are necessary, but having a bare-bottom tub right next to the sink makes them fast and painless. Anyway, that's my take on a proper quarantine setup. Good luck and keep on swimming!

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New Series: 50 Ways to Kill Your Fish

When I got serious about the aquarium hobby two years ago, I did tons of research. I was determined to succeed and consumed books, websites, and YouTube videos on freshwater fish. Despite being armed to the gills with data, I was shocked to find myself making mistake after mistake. Some of them were newbie blunders, and others were more complex cases that even veterans deal with. None of the how-to guides had prepared me for the onslaught of trouble this hobby brings.

So what did I do wrong? Nothing. Honestly, studying can only take you so far; hands-on experience is where the true learning happens. And I've definitely had my fair share of both successes and failures. Rather than write an overly detailed technical manual on everything you need to do right, I figured it'd be funnier to hear stories about all the ways things can go wrong. Welcome to the "50 Ways to Kill Your Fish" Series!

I hope you'll enjoy this series of mishaps and miscalculations that I've run into along the way. If you want the quick and dirty version, here are the top takeaways that summarize what I've learned:

1) Patience is key

Don't. Rush. Things. Seriously, this hobby is all about waiting — waiting for the coast to be clear, waiting for the conditions to be just right, waiting for what you really want and not just settling. I didn't take this subtle hint to heart because I was so excited about owning fish asap. Trust me, after the third time you have to take down your tank because of disease, you will be more than happy to wait as long as it takes to have a safe and healthy aquarium.

2) Disaster WILL happen

If you're following this series, I'm already assuming that you're a researcher. You want to be prepared, prevent unnecessary fires, and avoid the failures of your peers. Sorry to burst your bubble, but we live in a fallen world where Murphy's Law reigns. No amount of research can save you from hardship. Maintaining proper care and a backup plan will of course go a long way, but I'm just saying, lower your expectations on having the perfect, bulletproof tank. Like, by a lot.

3) Don't believe everything you read

If you don't know something, just Google it, right? But sometimes the internet lies. >_< There is a lot of information online, both good and bad. Followers on one forum will be adamant about Method A, and then people on another website will insist on Method B. So who should you believe? The best advice I got from my local fish store was "Sometimes you just gotta try it." Living creatures are sooo complex and nothing is guaranteed. Listen to the rule of thumb, but take it with a grain of salt and be willing to change things up if it's not working for you.

(Speaking of which, I'm going to publicly state right now that I am not a fish expert or professional ichthyologist. Everything on this website is merely my opinion and personal experiences, so no need to burn me in the comments section if you disagree. Let's keep the dialogue helpful and respectful for the purposes of educating and encouraging others.)

4) Learn from your mistakes

This sounds weird, but keep an aquarium log or diary. I have an Excel spreadsheet with columns for recording water parameters, but I mostly use the "Notes" section. It's useful in remembering how I've treated certain diseases or symptoms in the past, but it's also a great reminder of how far I've come when I get discouraged or impatient with the hobby.

Hope these high-level tips are helpful and whet your appetite for the series to come. Good luck and keep on swimming!