Fry tank help

Request information on fish, plants or other aquarium issues.
Richie-S444
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Evening all, I’m looking for a bit of advice on setting up a guppy fry tank/ QT tank.

So I’ve got 12 guppies in a Rio 180 tank who have had 21 fry which are currently in a net hatchery. I’m not keen on them staying in there for the obvious reason of it being too small.

I’ve just picked up a 24L kids tank from a mate which I could have set up tonight. The first question I have is, will a 100w heater be way too big for this? I will probably order a 25w but run the spare 100w I have for a week or so.

Next question is, I have a net bag of roughly 500g of biohome ultimate which has been sitting in the display of my other fully cycled tank for around 4 weeks, Will this be sufficient to process the waste in the 24L if the bag is just laying in the bottom of the tank? I will also be running a small waterfall filter.

Thanks
Richie.
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Gingerlove05
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How big are the fry? If they’re too big to be eaten by the adults then they can join them in the main tank.
The 100W would likely be overkill in the small tank.
Where has the spare media been in the tank? If there hasn’t been much flow around it there probably wont be a huge amount of beneficial bacteria. I would use a small portion out of the filter and some filter gunk added to the spare media and stuff as much of that in the small tank filter as you can, most bacteria colonise around a flow. I have also used tetra safe start or seachem stability when setting up a fry/qt tank to help establish some bacteria.
Richie-S444
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The fry are about 2 weeks old at this point so I think in a week or two they can go into the main tank, they still look a bit “bite sized”.

The bag of media was next to the filter inlet so should have seen a fairly decent amount of flow. Good point though, I could take some out the filter and put the spare stuff back in there. Sadly the media wouldn’t fit in the wee filter.

I’ll order a 25w heater.

Thanks for the advice.
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plankton
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I would just do it (with the spare media) and check the parameters daily, doing water changes where necessary.
There won't be much bioload from the fry yet.
Adding Safestart or Stability will help. :)
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Martinspuddle
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If you can, grab some Guppy grass to put in the tank. It's very good cover and great at removing toxins from the aquarium water.

Image

You can find on ebay.
WARNING - DO NOT BREED, FEED OR PET THE PUDDLE! :dodgy2:
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Richie-S444
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Thanks for the replies. I put the fry in last night with the 100w heater and the bag of media. They seem happy to have some space but I’ve struggled with either a bad thermometer or the temperature swinging by about 5c. When I came home tonight the tank was at 20c and the heater was off. Not sure if the heater has blown but it was brand new.

I’ve replaced it with my second brand new spare 100w so will monitor for a while. I’ve also ordered a 25w heater which will be here Friday.
I’ll be doing daily water tests for a while as I tend to test far more often than actually needed through paranoia 😂.

I’ll need to find some guppy grass but we’ve kinda struggled with live plants a bit in the other two tanks, they just don’t seem to thrive.
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Martinspuddle
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Richie-S444 wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2020 18:49 pm I’ll need to find some guppy grass but we’ve kinda struggled with live plants a bit in the other two tanks, they just don’t seem to thrive.
You can find guppy grass on eBay for £2 or £3 delivered. You only need a small amount, when you receive it you might find it a little brittle when you first get it, just take it out of the packet and put it in the aquarium water. You will see the young guppies pecking at it but I wouldn't worry too much, as being Toothcarp family they like to graze on any algae or biofilm that they can find. Trust me, you will find that within a week, ten days you'll have double the amount, as it grows rapidly.
WARNING - DO NOT BREED, FEED OR PET THE PUDDLE! :dodgy2:
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Si4geckos
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Richie-S444 wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2020 18:49 pm Thanks for the replies. I put the fry in last night with the 100w heater and the bag of media. They seem happy to have some space but I’ve struggled with either a bad thermometer or the temperature swinging by about 5c. When I came home tonight the tank was at 20c and the heater was off. Not sure if the heater has blown but it was brand new.

I’ve replaced it with my second brand new spare 100w so will monitor for a while. I’ve also ordered a 25w heater which will be here Friday.
I’ll be doing daily water tests for a while as I tend to test far more often than actually needed through paranoia 😂.

I’ll need to find some guppy grass but we’ve kinda struggled with live plants a bit in the other two tanks, they just don’t seem to thrive.
Probably because there's not enough water volume to disperse the heat. The heater needs to be at the correct angle with decent flow to prevent heat pockets. Aquarium coop on youtube did a video this week called some this along the lines of "why you aquarium heaters die/break". Worth a watch. Quite interesting.

Like Plankton said the bioload will be pretty tiny. Good luck with the fry.
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Martinspuddle
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Si4geckos wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2020 21:49 pm
Probably because there's not enough water volume to disperse the heat. The heater needs to be at the correct angle with decent flow to prevent heat pockets.
In the days of old, when the smallest heater you could get was a 75 watt heater and was fitted with an external thermostat we never had any troubles with equipment blowing up.

But there again life was simple and so was the technology!
WARNING - DO NOT BREED, FEED OR PET THE PUDDLE! :dodgy2:
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Si4geckos
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Martinspuddle wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2020 22:00 pm
Si4geckos wrote: Wed Jan 15, 2020 21:49 pm
Probably because there's not enough water volume to disperse the heat. The heater needs to be at the correct angle with decent flow to prevent heat pockets.
In the days of old, when the smallest heater you could get was a 75 watt heater and was fitted with an external thermostat we never had any troubles with equipment blowing up.

But there again life was simple and so was the technology!
Watch the video. it explains what's changed in the tech and why too :)
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