# Threadfin Rainbowfish



## jennandjuicetm (May 4, 2014)

Anyone know anything about threadfin rainbowfish? I got a pair Friday from a LPS and neither made it through acclimation.**I also got 10 pygmy cories, 9 are doing well in the QT tank but one was dead by the time I got home (40 minute ride). Did i acclimate them too fast? I put them in a small cup with 120 ml of their water from the store then added 20 ml of new water, dechlorinated of course, every 5-10 minutes. I did the same with the cories and so far the 9 are ok. I also added Seachem stress guard to the cups and the tank. 1 drop in each cup is all i did. The tank, normal dose. The water in the QT tank was fresh, added to the tank and dechlorinated Thursday night. My faucet water has zero ammonia, nitrites and nitrates.

I feel like I failed somehow with 3 fish lost so quickly.


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## n25philly (Dec 5, 2013)

I used to have threadfins. Very cool fish but also pretty sensitive and hard to keep, so you might not have done anything wrong. First off what are you water parameters?

Also they are a schooling/schoaling fish so you need to have room for a decent amount of them. How big is your tank. They are also difficult to feed as they have very tiny throats.


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## jennandjuicetm (May 4, 2014)

Of course, now I see this after I'm home with the new ones! I spoke to the fish specialist at the LPS where I got them from, he wasn't there when I got the first two and the girl working didn't know much about them. I just had to make a quick google search. He said what you did, that they can be sensitive. We decided that I probably got a round of bad luck and that I acclimated them too quickly. He didn't mention that they are shoaling but I wonder if he thought it would be information overload since I asked a ton of questions. The plan is for them to go in to the 10 gallon with my female betta Amelia and two ADFs. The 10g has 40gph of filterage (is that a word?) and I'm thinking of adding an air stone in one corner since both filters are biffled so there isn't much movement on the top. Up until now there haven't been anything but surface breathers in there haha. Anyway, the tank they are added to is 0 for ammonia, nitrite and trate. the ph is 6.0, same as the LPS water although when I was acclimating the first two the pH in the QT tank may have been a little higher since it hadn't aged yet. Perhaps that was one of the other issues. The LPS water was also 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 10ppm nitrate. Within the next few months we will be moving and I'll be transferring the 10g community to a 20 long so at that point I will definitely get them friends. The fish dude also said that they prefer a more neutral ph but I've heard that trying to change the ph is worse than leaving it as is. I've also heard that a lot of fish will adapt to a large range of phs. Any thoughts on that? I'm feeding the pygmies the Hikari micro pellents, is that small enough for these guys? I'm adding the proper dose of stress guard every day as well. 

For these new two I drip acclimated them for 3 hours and just added them in with the cories. So far so good!


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## n25philly (Dec 5, 2013)

It's sounds like the fish specialist doesn't know them that well.

They actually prefer a lower ph and live in ones that go all the way down to 5.2 in nature. I had them in a really low ph tank when I had them and they did really well. They are a shoaling species (most if not all rainbows are schooling/shoaling) so a bare minimum should be 6. I know that when I decided to go in another direction and not replace them they didn't do well as the group thinned out. If you take good care of them they should last until you can build up the group. When you go make sure you get a female or two if you can. When I added a couple of females to my schoal when I found some the colors in the males was noticeably different. You can tell females apart as they don't have any of those long filaments on them.

I'm not familiar with the micro pellets, but when I had them I would either crush up flake food or feed them stuff like frozen baby brine shrimp.


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## jennandjuicetm (May 4, 2014)

Great about the ph then! What would you recommend as far as water changes? My tap water is very high and after sitting for 48 hours it lowers to 6.0. Is letting the water age before a water change the only way to do it? That will be okay for now but what if I want a larger tank, say a 55 or so?


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## Stone (Jan 6, 2013)

You can use peat moss in the filter to lower your ph some, and yes age your water if it goes down, mine goes up after 48 hours lol I would shy away from any of the chemical ways to do it, you have to be really careful when using those, a bigger tank is always better you will have more stable conditions, the plant anacharis will help lower the ph dristwood will also help but it is not a miracle, some of the other little rainbows can tolrate low to pretty hig ph by high i mean like 9 high, I love those little rainbows so active and fun to watch


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