so we finally got around to setting up one of the 10 gallon tanks, i was kinda thinking it would be for our female guppy, and her possible coming babies.. so the question is should we put her in there alone? or get her another female? or should i maybe put a few corys in the tank with her? or something else? i dont want anything in there that will eat the fry, or overload the tank after there born, maybe a snail? i dunno.

Well, keep in mind the mother might eat most of the fry. If you want them to survive make sure to give them plenty of plants to hide in .

Cory cats would be a great choice but stick to smaller species. I don't know how many fry will survive so it's hard to judge how much the tank will be stocked once they are born. Perhaps you could wait to add more fish until after she has her babies? Or you could add a few pygmy cory cats...those guys stay really small and won't add too much to the bio-load. But they aren't always easy to find.

Oto cats are another good choice and they eat algae .

Or how about some shrimp? Depending on your guppy some might get eaten but they will help keep the tank clean and barely add anything to the bio-load. I would start with ghost shrimp because they are cheap, lol.

By the way, I would take some gravel and water from the already cycled tank and put it in the new one. It'll really speed up the cycle .

i thought about the ghost shrimp, do they have any special needs? or do they just eat the left over food off the bottem? would corys bother them? or vice versa?

all the gravel in the tank is from the other tank, so it should cycle really quick right?

They eat food off the bottom but it's a good idea to sometimes drop in a sinking pellet or wafer. You can actually find pellets made for shrimp in some petstores. They are very peaceful and normally don't bother other animals in the tank. I've been told cory cats will eat them but I've never tried keeping them together so I don't know for sure.

Yeah, it should cycle much faster . To speed it up even more you can take the filter cartridge from the other tank and squeeze it over the cartridge in the new tank. It's like home-made Bio-Spira . This way you are sharing the bacteria between the two tanks.

lol good idea!

also i looked for drift wood the last time we went to the petstore in the city and couldnt find any in the fish area, there was some drift wood ment for lizzards, it was huge, but we could get some of that and cut it down and it would work the same right? do you know any online stores to order cheap drift wood from?

Driftwood meant for reptiles is fine . If possible I would get one of the brands that has a weight to hold the driftwood down. Some brands are going to float for a while and/or release lots of tannins. I've been lucky and even though I never treated my driftwood it didn't really discolor the water and was held down by a piece of slate.

I don't know if this is much cheaper then your store but this website is very reliable and they have great stuff: Text Search: driftwood : Fish

What's really cool is that they sell pre-cured driftwood with live plants attached. You don't have to do anything to it, it won't make your water yellow-ish, it won't float, and you get a healthy plant .

Freshwater Aquarium Plants: Anubias barteri on Driftwood
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/p...catid=2384&N=0

i had my mind made up to get some ghost shrimp for the 10gal tank, i thought they would look kinda cool with the sunken pirate ship and such.. but i went to look at them and chickend out.. they kinda give me the creeps.. heh besides.. the black moors at walmart had white stuff on them, thats Ick right? and i know some of there tanks share filters, not sure if they all do or not.. but well.. that was my excuse for not getting them i dunno, i still kinda want some, just to see how they'd so and stuff.. i find them interesting.. but like spiders they still creep me out.. maybe i'll get some next time.. or maybe i'll think of something else...

I think shrimp are cute .

The white stuff could be ich if it was spots. But if it was more fuzzy or slimy then it was probably some kind of infection...probably from poor water quality or something .

Maybe you could get cherry or amano shrimp? They are more expensive but they aren't see-through so maybe they won't look as scary?

heh david said today he didnt want any shrimp, he thinks they look like bugs too they are kinda cute.. in a creepy i dont wanna touch it sorta way
maybe we'll get some oto cats, i havnt seen any here tho, we'll look next time we goto weatherford..

how do you know if your fish are getting enough to eat? the guppies always seem to beg for food when we come to look at them

Oto cats are nice...I'll be getting a few in a week or two . Make sure to get at least three and acclimate them slowly. Sometimes they can be sensitive when first added to the tank but once they've settled they are hardy fish. If you ask about them some petstores might try to convince you to buy other algae eating fish...don't listen to them, lol. You wouldn't want to end up with a Chinese Algae Eater or something .

I would look at their bellies . If they look pinched in then they are probably underweight. Overweight ones should look obvious . Keep in mind that guppies loooove to eat so they'll beg no matter what .