"Daniel Morrow" wrote in message
...
Only time will tell - it sure has. I cannot seem to be able to keep my
nitrites down any more and the silver dollars were breathing/gilling
hard
before my latest water change (1 hour ago) and the fancy guppies are
dieing
off approximately one every 2 days (unfortunately females - maybe
because
they are large and need more oxygen which their gills are unable to
provide
enough of because of the nitrite inhibiting their gill action)
occasional a
male passes away, and today the silver dollars aren't eating and the
fancy
guppies aren't eating nearly as much as they used to. I talked to my
lfs
representative (don't worry about my choice of words - my lfs has been
family (not my family) run for over a decade) and he agrees with my
plan to
buy an oscar for $9.00 to eat the fancy guppies (all of them) and raise
it
in this 55 gallon tank (the silver dollar tank), and he agrees I could
use
other large fish like other cichlids. His bottom line is that he says
he is
confident he can sell me a function fish to take care of this problem
for
sure. I consider this idea a humane way to deal with the situation (it
doesn't bother me and unfortunately it is the only reasonable way I can
think of about how to deal with this overpopulation problem) especially
considering what the humane society of america does with higher animals
(dogs, cats). Of course I am open for recommendations and the oscar or
other
large fish (the oscar would be sold to me at a 2 or 3 inch size which I
worry might not be hardy enough to grow through the initial high
nitrites
that would be in the silver dollar tank ultimately with the silver
dollars
and the one large cichlid type of fish and the tank is a 55 gallon
tank -
would that be o.k. guys/gals and including those of you who are
experts?
Even with the function fish I will have fancy guppies in 2 other tanks
that
can be used to hopefully humanely feed as live food to the function
fish
later after the silver dollar tank is "cleaned out". The other tanks
have no
problems right now because one of them has 3 turtles in it that keep
the
fancy guppy population under control and the other tank has only just
re-started a population of fancy guppies in it. Thanks for reading this
and
please give me advice?! Thanks, good luck and later! P.s. I am looking
at a
2 or 3 or less week timeframe to get the new "big" fish and I hope it
works!
I will never burry any fish alive so to speak, because I consider that
inhumane so I won't throw the fish out with the garbage or anything
like
that so to speak (I know....I know.... some people have a hard time
differentiating what's humane compared between burying alive and
providing
to other creatures as food which is most likely a quick death making it
more
human) but I have to do something or else I might lose my silver
dollars and
after that one recovering from the accident a few months ago so well it
would be a shame to lose one or both of them to a dumb overpopulation
problem. Again, later!


It's a bad idea to move any fish into a tank which is having problems.
Also it can be a bad idea to buy function fish, as the function is
quickly addressed leaving you with a fish to cater to. This is never so
obvious as when adding an Oscar to a Guppy tank. If you want an Oscar,
then buy an Oscar. If you have too many Guppies, bag them all to the
LFS. An Oscar will not stop with the small Guppies, and will basically
wipe the population out. If you want a carnivorous predator, Bettas,
medium Gouramis and medium sized cichlids will fill that role, but you
don't have a healthy tank to put them in. jmo, best wishes with that.
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