1. "I've gotten through my cycle and tested ok on nitrite, nitrate, ammonia. So I'm good, right?" ----not necessarily. First doublecheck your salinity: 1.024 for a reef. Then doublecheck your alkalinity. 7.9 to 9 is good, 8.3 a nice middling ground. THis is real important, because bad water quality can irritate skin and gills and set fish up for problems they might have gotten past in better water.
2. "My lfs says my water is ok." There is no 'ok' reading on any test I own. 1.) you need real numbers, you need to write them down, and you need to remember them. They may not mean a lot to you yet, but they will. 2) trusting your lfs to do your tests is not optimum. If you can't afford tests, the lack may do in fish. You need, at minimum: a refractometer; your nitrate ammonia tests continued weekly; an alkalinity test, and alkalinity buffer. Plus a bottle of Prime if things go south rapidly. And enough salt for a water change. ALWAYS. Plus a little booklet kept with your tests. You should be testing and qt'ing your fish. And BEFORE you put your qt'ed fish in, and every day thereafter for a week, test the water again, and write down the result. If there are changes, you need to ask why.
3. stress will give my fish ich. No. It might kill your fish, but it will not give him ich, if there is no ich living in your tank. It's not a condition, it's an animal. Like fleas. Saying there's ich in every tank or that stress causes it is like saying there are fleas in every house. Or that fleas will materialize in your house if, say, you get a visit from a detested aunt.
4. fish will only grow to fit the tank. That isn't even true in freshwater, where the possession of an arowana is not a good thing for a 10 gallon guppy tank. Our tanks range up to a fairly regulation 500 gallon, before you get into the truly custom. So do our fish...some maxing out at a foot, some at more than a foot. And needing a salmon net to handle. Moving an adult angel, eg, can be an exercise involving really good and strong friends---and fairly hard on the fish, so you don't want to do that if you can avoid it. Check the adult size when contemplating a fish, and figure the fish can get to a good portion of that size in under a year. Two, and you've got a real problem. Your fish is piling on girth and his internal works are getting more and more stressed. Even if 'rescued' before he dies, he won't be the fish he could have been if not put in a too-small tank.
5. Fish only live a year or so. No. Blennies and gobies have a fairly short lifespan, about 2-3 years. But others can live a decade. Some fish can live more than a hundred years. So be respectful and careful of a fish that should have a lot of healthy years ahead. They're not decor. They're not toys for children. They have personalities, they get to know you, and they depend on you to make good decisions.
6. Fish meds and food are supervised by the FDA, so you can trust what's on the label or in the ads. No. They're not, unless they're a fish you mean to eat. These are not regulated, and anybody can print up a label and claim most anything that sounds credible. Of course this food will make your reef spring to life overnight. Of course this will color up your coral. Of course this reef safe med will rid your fish of ich. No. Just no. Word of mouth by people who've used it a while is your best hope for accuracy.
7. Reef safe means like 'community fish'. Nooooo it doesn't. It means like it generally won't eat your corals. It may eat every fish and invert you own, but it won't touch your corals. And if it says 'reef safe with caution', it means some will---and some won't. Dice roll. Or it means---safe with softies, but not stonies: ask around. RC is a good place to ask questions. As a sidenote, a lfs here had a rabbitfish, of all things, decide it liked hammer coral for snacks. So even so you get surprises. My own take on it is that the hammer was a green one and that rabbit really wanted some seaweed, their normal diet.
8. Speaking of rabbitfish, do NOT take it for granted that everything we handle is safe. No. Some things we handle can give you real serious hurt if mis-handled. Read the sticky on toxins in your tank atop the NTTHobby forum. Wear gloves, and wash up carefully.
9. 'use a fish to cycle a tank' ---horrors, no. A pinch of fishfood daily will do it without killing a fish.
10. "It says here...x is ok in this type of tank." Take that with a grain of salt. Err on the side of mercy. It may say so, but if you're on the squeaky edge of the requirement, sure don't undershoot it by 5 gallons. These are LIFE requirements we're talking about; and at a borderline size, if you add another fish, it may be WWIII. Most fish aren't keen on fighting, but they're really not keen on sharing an already squeaky-small space with another.
2. "My lfs says my water is ok." There is no 'ok' reading on any test I own. 1.) you need real numbers, you need to write them down, and you need to remember them. They may not mean a lot to you yet, but they will. 2) trusting your lfs to do your tests is not optimum. If you can't afford tests, the lack may do in fish. You need, at minimum: a refractometer; your nitrate ammonia tests continued weekly; an alkalinity test, and alkalinity buffer. Plus a bottle of Prime if things go south rapidly. And enough salt for a water change. ALWAYS. Plus a little booklet kept with your tests. You should be testing and qt'ing your fish. And BEFORE you put your qt'ed fish in, and every day thereafter for a week, test the water again, and write down the result. If there are changes, you need to ask why.
3. stress will give my fish ich. No. It might kill your fish, but it will not give him ich, if there is no ich living in your tank. It's not a condition, it's an animal. Like fleas. Saying there's ich in every tank or that stress causes it is like saying there are fleas in every house. Or that fleas will materialize in your house if, say, you get a visit from a detested aunt.
4. fish will only grow to fit the tank. That isn't even true in freshwater, where the possession of an arowana is not a good thing for a 10 gallon guppy tank. Our tanks range up to a fairly regulation 500 gallon, before you get into the truly custom. So do our fish...some maxing out at a foot, some at more than a foot. And needing a salmon net to handle. Moving an adult angel, eg, can be an exercise involving really good and strong friends---and fairly hard on the fish, so you don't want to do that if you can avoid it. Check the adult size when contemplating a fish, and figure the fish can get to a good portion of that size in under a year. Two, and you've got a real problem. Your fish is piling on girth and his internal works are getting more and more stressed. Even if 'rescued' before he dies, he won't be the fish he could have been if not put in a too-small tank.
5. Fish only live a year or so. No. Blennies and gobies have a fairly short lifespan, about 2-3 years. But others can live a decade. Some fish can live more than a hundred years. So be respectful and careful of a fish that should have a lot of healthy years ahead. They're not decor. They're not toys for children. They have personalities, they get to know you, and they depend on you to make good decisions.
6. Fish meds and food are supervised by the FDA, so you can trust what's on the label or in the ads. No. They're not, unless they're a fish you mean to eat. These are not regulated, and anybody can print up a label and claim most anything that sounds credible. Of course this food will make your reef spring to life overnight. Of course this will color up your coral. Of course this reef safe med will rid your fish of ich. No. Just no. Word of mouth by people who've used it a while is your best hope for accuracy.
7. Reef safe means like 'community fish'. Nooooo it doesn't. It means like it generally won't eat your corals. It may eat every fish and invert you own, but it won't touch your corals. And if it says 'reef safe with caution', it means some will---and some won't. Dice roll. Or it means---safe with softies, but not stonies: ask around. RC is a good place to ask questions. As a sidenote, a lfs here had a rabbitfish, of all things, decide it liked hammer coral for snacks. So even so you get surprises. My own take on it is that the hammer was a green one and that rabbit really wanted some seaweed, their normal diet.
8. Speaking of rabbitfish, do NOT take it for granted that everything we handle is safe. No. Some things we handle can give you real serious hurt if mis-handled. Read the sticky on toxins in your tank atop the NTTHobby forum. Wear gloves, and wash up carefully.
9. 'use a fish to cycle a tank' ---horrors, no. A pinch of fishfood daily will do it without killing a fish.
10. "It says here...x is ok in this type of tank." Take that with a grain of salt. Err on the side of mercy. It may say so, but if you're on the squeaky edge of the requirement, sure don't undershoot it by 5 gallons. These are LIFE requirements we're talking about; and at a borderline size, if you add another fish, it may be WWIII. Most fish aren't keen on fighting, but they're really not keen on sharing an already squeaky-small space with another.
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