Babysitting someone else's fish...

The Sweeper

Okay - bear with me, these are not my fish and I have a load of my own pets.

I offered to babysit fish for someone I don't know because she was caught short over Christmas. We had an aquarium when I was a teenager - it was my older brother's pride and joy and when he moved out, care of it fell to me. That's a long time ago, but I remember water testing, filters, pumps, a heater and a light.

This chick has guppies - and I figured, how hard can it be?

So she dropped over a small, 20 litre tank - a 'panoramic' tank, so it's only 20 centimetres in depth from front to back. There are six guppies in the tank. There's no light, heater, filter or pump, so the water is stagnant.

There are three plastic plants and a plastic skull. There are no stones or gravel - think she had glass pebbles and took them out to make the tank easier to transport. She got here with it about 1/3 full of water, and then proceeded to top up the tank with water straight from the tap and drop in a teaspoon of rock salt.

She also left me tubing to clean the tank by siphoning (I remember we had a wee vacuum you could slot onto the pump on our old tank).

Finally, I have a bottle of flake with a siamese fighting fish on it, which I assume she bought because at a glance it might look like a guppy...

Anyway. The point is: I'm a bit traumatised. The fish got here around 19th December. I haven't killed them yet. (Are guppies unkillable?!) I've cleaned the tank by the siphon method twice and refreshed the water.

Note: I'm not in Ireland, I'm in the tropics of Australia so it's warm enough here that the fish don't need a heater in the tank. The stick-on thermometers on the glass are just black top to bottom though and don't seem to work.

I dunno, she keeps these fish like this all the time. And they breed! She apparently has stocked a few friends up with guppies. I just feel really uncomfortable because I think the poor fish are in badly-oxygenated water and I can't figure out how to keep the tank clean - it's like it's dirty again within two days of cleaning it.

I think I'm just suffering the guilts because even though these aren't my fish, if they were I'd be keeping them a lot differently. Am I kidding myself? Is this par for the course for guppies? Should I let it be? She's coming to get them on 10th January.

Is there anything I can do to oxygenate the water or help clean the tank?

NB: if I have to spend anything more than nominal cash my OH will divorce me for getting involved in some random woman's pet problems. Plus anything I put in the tank I need to take out before I return it to her, it not being my tank and so on. (I had the conversation re pumps and filters and so on with her when she dropped it off, and she was pretty short with me in terms of 'STFU, they're fine' sort of thing, so I'll not be handing her back her tank with a filtration system in it.)

Lastly, please don't lambast me over these fish, as I said if they were mine it'd be a different story, but I can't even get the RSPCA out for cruelty to mammals, so I've no hope with six guppies.

Any measures I can take in the short term?

kylith

Keeping up with the water changes with dechlorinated water is probably about the best you can do without having to shell out for filters. The regular changes will also help to keep oxygen in the water.

The Sweeper

kylith wrote: »

Keeping up with the water changes with dechlorinated water is probably about the best you can do without having to shell out for filters. The regular changes will also help to keep oxygen in the water.

Thank you! How do I dechlorinate the water?

kylith

You can buy dechlorinater from pet shops or online. I add it to my water change bucket before I put the tap water in the tank and it removes the chlorine instantly. I use Nutrafin Aqua Plus.

The Sweeper

Thanks for that. I'll pop to the aquarium shop (10 mins away from me) later today.

I offered to mind them because I've had this hankering for a fish tank again for a while as a sort of project/hobby. I thought if I minded them it'd put me off. No chance, it's just piqued my interest! The more I read about cycling the tank, ammonia and nitrites and nitrates and sumps and so on, the more into it I get, and the more horrified I am about these guppies. Plus we'll be moving about a bit and I already have seven pets to relocate so I'm not sure adding a fish tank would be the finest move...

godtabh

Chlorine is very volatile. Leave it Ian bucket over night and you won't need to do anything before adding to tank

fred funk }{

godtabh wrote: »

Chlorine is very volatile. Leave it Ian bucket over night and you won't need to do anything before adding to tank

+1

It's also a gas and naturally dissipates. Some people use a small air pump with an air stone in the bucket to speed the process along.

kylith

If there's chloramine present in the water, which is a mix of chlorine and ammonia used in water treatment plants in some countries, that won't dissipate like chlorine will. Sweeper says they're in Oz, so there may be chloramine in the water supply.

I'd say better safe than sorry.