Why is my home fish aquarium so dirty?

Ten seems like a lot of fish for that size tank unless they are tetras or something very small. Have you used the one inch rule or another calculation to see if you tank is too crowded?

3 neon tetra, 3 goldfish, 2 guarini kissing fish, and 2 black skirt tetras

Your supposed to do a 10% water change/clean the tank once a week. Make sure your vacuuming the gravel real well when you do your water changes as that is where all the detritus accumulates. So if your not hitting that good enough it will just build and build and the tank will get dirtier faster.

Also how much do you feed? A general rule of thumb is feed no more than the fish can eat in three minutes. So you may be over feeding.

Your tank is overstocked as well. Personally i would take the three goldfish out as they are VERY dirty fish. Im sure youve noticed already if you run your finger along the inside of the glass its slimy, thats from them.

I knew uber would be here. I just knew it.

well durrr im a fish nerd. My tank is actually going through hell right now. My hydrometer is all screwed up so the salinity in my tank was up to 1.031(way high) when it was reading 1.021 and craps dying so i gotta slowly drop it and hope for the best…..

Goldfish are filthy. 3 of them alone in a 10 gallon produce a lot of waste, and then there are 7 others in there besides them. I would suggest a partial water change every week, and there are chemicals you can add to control waste saturation.

@uberbatman: Serious, .01 makes that big a difference? Who knew? Good luck. Because of your fish obsession I kinda feel like I’ve met your whole tank. It’s ummm weird. :)

@uberbatman I’m having a bit of a problem myself with one of my tanks, maybe you’re the person I should be talking to!

@asmonet believe it or not, but .001 makes a difference to the coral >_<

@elijahsuicide whats up? :P

its a brand new tank so i havent experienced grimy or slimy stuff yet, and i dont have any gravel on the floor, as for food, i only drop a pinch of food in and its gone as im screwing on the top.

@uberbatman I will PM you, I don’t want to hijack the thread.

Psst, Uber is your man on fish tanks.

@glitterrrrfish when you say brand new do you mean like BRAND NEW or like a couple months old?

How long has the tank been set up?

You don’t have gravel? What do you have?

id assume bare bottom, which isnt really good for fish, it tends to stress them out, though it does make for easy cleaning lol.

Yeah that seems weird. I can’t even look at tanks like that. It’s just wrong. I feel like it’s like a bed with sheets, pillow cases, a blanket but no mattress or pillow to be found.

brand new as in like just bought it last sunday and set it up last sunday
i dont like gravel, poop gets stuck in it and yea it makes for easy cleaning.
i have a plant and a neon cave, very trippy

how does a bare bottom stress them out?

How would the floor of your house disappearing stress you out?

Huzzah, uberfishman!

Well theres your problem. You didnt cycle your tank at all and then threw 10 fish in there….

how should i have done it then?

@glitterrrrfish As you are new at this, a basic book might be helpful. Perhaps uberbatman has a good suggestion. Ease for you is not the first priority, creating a healthy environment is number one.

When you get a new aquarium you want to set it up with everything including gravel and let it run for 1–2 weeks with nothing in the tank. It needs to establish the necessary bacterias to support life. Then after all this you want to add no more than 3 fish at a time. Give them a couple days to a week to get adjusted to your tank and make sure theyre doing fine, then add some more. Like mentioned above you should stick to the rule 1in of full grown fish per gallon of water. And its by their full grown size, not the size you purchase them at as they will grow in your tank.

What i recommend you do is bring those fish back to where ever you got them because they are more than likely going to die in your tank the way it is right now. Start over and do it right.

Keeping fish really isnt as easy as most believe. It can be easy and simplistic, but only after you do your research, without it, your almost doomed to fail. This isnt meant to scare you away from keeping fish, just letting you know what your getting into. Its always wise to read up about a fish your thinking about buying before you actually get one. Impulse buying is never a good idea.

Oh and be warned, this hobby is highly addictive. October of 2007 i got a 10g freshwater tank for some tropical fish. I had no interest in them at all when i got the tank, simone54 was moving and he asked if i wanted it. Now a little over a year later i have a 55g fish only, 20g mantis tank, 44g reef tank, and i just built a 4g nano with all the filtration built in last week lol.

simone54 is a dude?

@asmonet I knew that one! (Only because he told me though.) I will leave it to him to explain to you if he chooses, but will tell you that his user name does make sense. Sexing jellies is hard!

Seriously. :P

yup simone is a dude, i cooked with him for three years in an Italian restaurant. :)

is your name joe bags?

It’s the goldfish. They could ruin any tank. They belong in ponds or troughs

rule of thumb is one inch of fish per gallon of tank and you should be doing a cleaning about once every two weeks, that is a water change and a filter change once a month