# Help- fish "care sheets"



## whiskandbowl (Aug 21, 2012)

Hey all. I'm fairly new here but learning lots.
As you may (or may not!) know, I work at a locally owned petstore. I've been in charge of redoing our store care sheets with updated information. I've got the furry critters down but need some help with fish! 
There's so much information out there, and much of it is conflicting! Any help you guys could offer would be much appreciated!!!:-D

I'm making an "at a glance" chart that has the name of the fish, size, minimum tank requirements etc.
If someone would be willing to read over the full document, I'd love you forever! (I'd also be willing to post it here, but it's a bit large)

The second sheet is one I'm calling "What Can I Put in My __ Gallon Tank". It lists the tank size with stocking ideas. For Example:

*5 Gallon*
-One betta (male or female)
- 3 or 4 African Dwarf frogs
-3 male OR 3 female guppies
I'm doing 5gallon, 10gallon, and 20gallon lists.

I'm having the most issues with compatibility, and stocking/overstocking. Any ideas for stocking these size tanks is much appreciated.

The fish we sell are Bettas (male and female), GloFish, Barbs (cherry and another kind I'm unsure of, will check Friday), Angelfish, Platies, Mollies, Swordtails, Guppies, Neon Tetras, Cory Cats, Plecos, and the ones Petco/Petsmart lists as "Algae Eaters, I don't know their 'actual' name.
OH! and dwarf frogs, albino frogs, and unknown snails (possibly apple snails) 
I hope I'm not asking too much, it just gets so confusing with so many opinions!
Giant Virtual cookies if you made it through that


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## thekoimaiden (Oct 19, 2011)

I have to run off to work here in a little bit, but I'll be more than happy to write a longer response when I get back. Off the bat, you should remove angelfish from that list. They can't fit into any of those tanks. And unless you can say for certain the pleco is a bristlenose pleco (image) then you should take that off the list, too. I greatly applaud your efforts to do this right! I'll lend as much help as I can!! :-D

I will leave you with this site: Tropical Fish Profiles It's the sister site to BettaFish.com, and you can use that page to search for a lot of the fish you listed. The profiles have things like min tank requirements and compatibility. That will help you begin your list!


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## whiskandbowl (Aug 21, 2012)

Thank you!!:-D

I didn't plan on including angelfish or plecos on the "tank" sheet, I did know that they both get quite large. Where I'm finding the most difficulty is compatibility, I did look on the TFK site but sometimes it just says "peaceful community fish" or the like, which is confusing to me.

I'm hoping these sheets help educate customers, so many disregard it when I mention angelfish get 6+ inches, or cories need to be in groups of 4+


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## MyRainbowBettaFish (May 9, 2012)

we are honored to help! Please make sure that:

5 gallon-

1 male/female betta(make it the bare minimum for a betta if you can, and make it clear they NEED a heater to keep the water at 80f)

10 gallon

4-5 guppies, always 1 males to 3 female ratio to discourage fighting

OR

DIVIDE the tank for 2 bettas(they fight do the death)

20 gallon

BARE MINIMUM

-1 FANCY(black moor, fantail, oranda....etc)

NO OTHER FISH!

A goldfish needs a minimum of 20 gallons per goldfish, and they need a filter rated fora bigger aquarium ALWAYS

Happy to help!


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## whiskandbowl (Aug 21, 2012)

Thank you! We sell male and female guppies separately. Are there any issues putting together multiple males (3 or more)?


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## thekoimaiden (Oct 19, 2011)

Not usually. Just make sure you have enough females to "spread the love" so to speak if you have females in with males. 

When you go to stock tanks like the 1 gal, 5 gal, and 10 gal, those are best left as single-species tanks. All of the fish that can live in a 10 gal tank need groups (aside from bettas, but they are the exception to the rule). And you can really only fit one group of fish in a tank that small. Cherry barbs and guppies would be good fits for that tank. A group of cherry barbs is a pretty hardy thing. Good for beginners. 

The 20 gal is going to give the most flexibility here. You can do two schools of fish in there. A top-swimming fish and a substrate fish. That would mean a school of cories and then a school of something like guppies, mollies, cherry barbs, and most of the small fish you mentioned. The notable exceptions being glofish (zebra danio) and swordtails. Both are very very active fish and need something more like a 30 gal or larger. 

I'm guessing that algae eater is a Siamese algae eater which can be a problem as they can be aggressive. If someone wants algae control tell them to turn the lights off and do more water changes.


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