5 gallon fish tank

[Anonymous]

*excuse the typo, that should be "hole".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have 3 fake plants, one fake turtle and a rock with a whole in it. They have lots of hiding spaces.

My son was DETERMINED that one of those fish must go inside the whole in the rock. When he saw one do it he was beyond excited!

The fish have to summon up the courage to swim through. Everything is scary to them at first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Surprised to hear about the pleco getting big. Usually fish adapt to the size of their environment. So a fish that can get pretty big if it were living in a large tank or out in the wild would grow in proportion to the tank size and be considerable smaller in a smaller tank.

This is a common misunderstanding. Obviously the fish can't grow bigger than its tank. But the fish will grow as large as it possibly can given the space, air, and water quality. For big species, "as large as it possibly can" means "larger than is healthy for that space." You end up with a fish that is deformed or sick or dead, depending on how bad the mismatch is.

Think about it: if someone kept a kitten in a shoe box and never took it out, of course the kitten would not grow bigger than the shoe box. It might not die, either. But the kitten would not become a miniature version of a healthy adult cat. There's nothing about fish that makes them "adapt" differently than that, except maybe that their health problems are less obvious to us because we don't normally interact with cold-blooded underwater things.

Anyway, I'm late to this thread and just wanted to +1 all the people saying not to get plecos. Good luck to OP, and if the current fish don't do well, maybe look into a small heater for your tank. There's a "flat" style that's inexpensive and doesn't take up much room.

[Anonymous]

You really should get a small heater OP. Guppies and tetras are tropical fish that should be kept around 80 degrees. What temp is your tank running without a heater?

[Anonymous]

I think the tank is running at about 75 right now. Thanks for the advice, I will pick up a heater.

[Anonymous]

75 isn't too bad but I definitely think a heater will be helpful and beneficial for the fish. Worth it in the long run! You should be able to find one pretty inexpensively.

[Anonymous]

How are the fish doing, OP?

[Anonymous]

They are doing great. I noticed one guppy chasing the other occasionally. I googled and it seems that does happen sometimes.

I think it's time for us to tackle cleaning the tank this weekend. Hopefully it wont be too messy (8year old is excited to "help") and hopefully the fish survive.

[Anonymous]

Glad to hear things are going well! Thanks for the update.