Fish tank experience? When to clean?

[MamaMolly]

Lula and Dolly got a guppy each last month. We have them in a nice little 2.5 gallon tank with a filter and light. How often do I need to clean out the tank, if at all? There are some bits of fish flakes in the plastic plant but other than that it seems pretty clean to me. I want to keep the little dudes happy and I'm scared to mess with it if they don't need me to.

[wellyes]

I love guppies!

A safe rule of thumb for hearty fish like that is to replace 25% of the water monthly.
Save a 1/2 gallon milk jug, rinse it well, fill with water and put the drops in. Leave overnight.
Get a manual siphon at the pet store, suck water out from the rocks at the bottom.
Add new water, you're done.

Eventually if the girls like the guppies, you should get more, they are very social and like to be a bigger group of 3+.

[trcy]

It has been a while sine I have had an aquarium but IIRC smaller tanks need to be cleaned more frequently. I would say use a gravel vacuum weekly, removing and replacing about 25% of the water. Even though it looks clean, toxins can build up and kill your fish. You can get a gravel vacuum inexpensively at PetSmart; Target or Walmart probably carry them too.
http://m.petsmart.com/mt/www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=11123493&f=PAD%2FpsNotAvailInUS%2FNo

[MamaMolly]

We love the guppies too! but I thought we could only have two in our tank? They said one gallon of water per guppy, or were they trying to up-sell us on a larger tank? Right now the little dudes are very cute and seem happy enough. I might look on CL or Freecycle for a larger tank.

[trcy]

We love the guppies too! but I thought we could only have two in our tank? They said one gallon of water per guppy, or were they trying to up-sell us on a larger tank? Right now the little dudes are very cute and seem happy enough. I might look on CL or Freecycle for a larger tank.

I have always heard the "one inch of fish per gallon of water" as a general rule of thumb when it comes to stocking a tank.

[wellyes]

We love the guppies too! but I thought we could only have two in our tank? They said one gallon of water per guppy, or were they trying to up-sell us on a larger tank? Right now the little dudes are very cute and seem happy enough. I might look on CL or Freecycle for a larger tank.

You would definitely need a bigger tank with more fish. If/when you decide to go bigger, keep an eye on Slickdeals, small aquariums go on sale cheap all the time ($20 or less with filter & light).

[Mikey0709]

We started with 4 guppies about 2 years ago. 2.5 gallon tank. We change the filter, add water, thats about it. Within a few months we had about 30 guppies! Ha! Couldn't wait to call my parents and tell them they were great grandparents! Kids loved watching the babies. Yeah, until they started disappearing.

We put some in a separate tank... I guess survival of the fittest, and were back to around 3 or 4 in each tank.

Honestly we do very little maintenance.