Let's Get Some Fish!
Last month we covered water quality and how to treat your water with different chemicals and additives. We also went over how to get rid of green water (suspended algae). If you haven't read the previous articles, look at the links at the top of this page and click to read them first. This month's article focuses on how to add fish to our new as well as our established aquarium. The actual ways and means of doing this vary greatly within the fish community, I will just relate to you here what seems to work best for me, and why. If you use a different method, it does not make it wrong, it is just different.
There will be two sections here...
Adding to a new aquarium.
Adding to an aquarium with occupants in it already.
Adding fish to a new tank:
So far, let's hope you have tested and properly adjusted the pH and temperature within the tank. Now you have arrived home from that long trip to the fish store and your arms are all loaded down with water filled plastic baggies. Hopefully not too many, as you do not want to introduce too many fish into your tank at any one time! Doing so can cause an imbalance in the water as we discussed in part three of this series (see link below). For a good average, add no more than 3 inches of fish per 20 gallons of water in any seven-day period of time. This slow method allows for the biological portion of your filtration system keep up with the amount of fish (bio-load) of your tank.
For arguments sake, let's say you were smart and only brought home a few fish to start your tank off with. Since your tank is brand new, the best species to start a tank off with are White Cloud Mountain Minnows (Tanichthys albonubes), closely followed by species such as Danios and guppies.
Ideally, you would have a secondary tank called a hospital or quarantine tank to keep these fish in for about 14 days prior to adding to your community or show tank. A quarantine tank is usually just a small 5 or 10 gallon tank that allows you to isolate the fish for a couple of weeks to ensure your new additions are not carrying any diseases or parasites. Granted, I know a lot of first time fish keepers only have one tank, and do not have either the room or the finances for a second tank. It is not required that you have one of these secondary tanks, but as you get further immersed into the hobby you will find them invaluable. For the rest of this article, however, I will assume that you only have one tank.
Place the baggies of fish into your tank WITHOUT opening them. Let them rest floating in the water for 15-30 minutes. The fish will be fine and NOT run out of oxygen. What we are doing is making sure that the water temperature between the tank and baggies equalizes. We sure as heck don't need to put our new fishes into a state of shock!
After this wait you will want to open one bag and add some water from your tank into the baggie. In a few minutes add a bit more water, and so on. If you need to remove some water from the baggie, make sure this water DOES NOT enter your tank; discard it outside, onto plants or into an available sink. This whole process may take 20 minutes or more. This method is there to make your new fish feel comfortable in case there is (and often there is!) a pH difference between your tank and the water from the pet store.
Now here comes the place where you need to decide what you want to do: Many people take the water filled baggie out of the tank, hold it over a sink, and then pour out all the water and the fish into a fish net. Then take the netted fish and add them to the tank. This ensures that no "bad" water form the pet store enters your tank. While this method does have its merits, often times with barbed fish like Raphael's, Gourami's, Angelfish and the like, injuries from being caught up in the net can occur, so it pays to be extra careful.
Other people will simply open up the baggie in the tank and allow the new fish to swim out on their own when they are ready. This way no harm or undue stress can be inflicted upon the fish, but it does make your tank susceptible to infected water from the pet store. (Another reason to have the quarantine tank!) So whichever method you choose is up to you; neither is absolutely wrong or absolutely right.
Here is the easy part, and quite natural: For the next 10-30 minutes, just watch your fish. Look for any unusual or odd behaviors. Now it is quite common for a fish just introduced to a new environment to head straight to the bottom of a tank, or into some hiding place. As long as everything seems to be going along just fine feel free to follow the above steps in releasing the remainder of fish. Do not feed them right away as they are adjusting and need at least an hour or two to mark out their new territory.
Adding fish to an existing tank:
So your tank has been running well for a while now and you are ready to add some more critters to it.... If you have made any kind of an investment in your fish I HIGHLY recommend you set up the previously discussed quarantine tank (that smaller, secondary aquarium). You will want to keep your new fish separate from the main tank for approximately two weeks. This will allow you time to treat the fish in case of any disease. Disease is very common in newly acquired fish due to the stress placed on them during transportation.
Just prior to adding your fish to your community tank, do some house cleaning in it and move around some of the decorations, rockeries and the like. Introduce your new fish within an hour of doing this. Most fish are territorial and have set up there own "place" within the tank. New fish would either have no place to call their own or have to fight your existing fish for a spot in the tank. By rearranging your decorations/rockeries this allows for both new fish and old fish to claim a new part of the tank as their own. Keep an eye out for fighting. Some species just shouldn't be mixed. Be prepared to remove the offending fish if this occurs (yet just another reason for having the quarantine tank).
The biggest rule I really want to get across to everyone is NOT to add too many fish too quickly. All too often we have those impulse shopping urges and just "have to get" that additional cool fish or two. Just remember if you are walking up to the checkout stand and it takes two hands to hold all the fish, chances are you are going to meet up with some problems in the very near future. Besides if you only get three fish a week, it's a great excuse to revisit the fish store again next week to see what new additions they may have brought in.
Salt:
Okay, Okay, everyone has talking about adding salt to their aquariums lately, so here are the facts. All fish need a certain amount of salt, however the majority of freshwater fish find the amount of salt that naturally occurs in our freshwater sufficient. Certain species can tolerate larger amounts of salt, others cannot. The easiest way to tell if your fish can or cannot tolerate salt is to look at their scales. If you have a large scaled fish like a Goldfish, Bala shark, etc. then your fish can tolerate you adding additional alt to the tank. If, however, you have tight scaled or scaleless fish like eels, knife fish, most tetras, etc. these species generally do not tolerate the addition of more salt at all.
Why is this? Simply put it is a mechanism called osmosis. Fish maintain an internal concentration of salt in their body fluids higher than that of their liquid environment. Osmosis causes water to transfer from the lower salinity of the pond water into the tissues of the fish. The kidneys must eliminate this additional water buildup. Although salt in higher concentrations may slow some disease-causing bacterial growth in the pond and aquarium, the predominantly accepted theories ascribe the primary benefits of salt to lowering the osmotic pressure. This reduces the effort the fish must expend in eliminating the excess water. The saved energy is then available for use by the fish's own immune system to take care of other potential problems. The presence of salt also helps counteract any nitrite toxicity. In some cold climate areas, it is added in the winter to lower the freezing point of the water.
Most local tap water (but call and ask your water company, or test your own water for the results first) often has a salinity of up to 0.5 ppt. This amount cannot be tasted, but we drink it and we put it into our ponds and aquariums. If our fish were put into an absolutely pure (distilled) water environment, the osmotic pressure would be so high that some species would be unable to eliminate the excess water and would die almost as if by drowning. On the other hand, if the salinity approaches that of the internal tissues of the fish, the osmosis process will decrease or even reverse. This can cause the fish to die, essentially of dehydration. Any discussions should therefore center not on whether salt should be in the water, but how much. This osmosis process is directly affected by scale type and size. So, speaking in generalities, large scaled fish can generally take additional salt, up to a point. Small tight scaled and scaleless fish cannot.
Now the decision of whether or not to add salt is a personal one. The greatest "myth" out there is the thousand and one sure fire, rule of thumb rule about adding salt. 1 tablespoon per gallon, 1 teaspoon per 5 gallon, whatever the particular "expert" swears by, .... everywhere I go I see a new set of rules and guidelines, and no two are ever the same! Since everyone's water has a different concentration of salt in it, there is no such thing as a hard and fast rule to go by!
If you are in the mood to add salt, ALWAYS spend the few dollars on a good hydrometer so you can accurately see where your levels are, and how much, if any, you are going to adjust it. Heck, you don't blindly add pH UP or pH Down to your tank; you test your water first to see if you need to add any, and approximately how much. Well the same is true with salt.
When discussing salt for ponds and aquariums, I want you to be quite aware that I am not talking about adding (or not adding) standard table salt. Table salt is what is known as "iodized salt" or salt that contains iodine. The salt that should be, and safely can be added to your ponds and aquariums is non-iodized salt, commonly sold as aquarium salt. You can also find this salt in your grocery store under the name of "canning salt". There is still a great debate about whether or not to use table or iodized salt in freshwater aquariums, personally I figure, why risk it? If I feel the need to add salt (which I rarely do) I always use non-iodized salts.
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