You are a far better snail catcher than I am. I always missed a few. Now, I never introduce new plants into any of my tanks before they have been soaked in a solution of potassium permanganate. Then to be sure, I pot them up and leave them for a month in a tank housing snail eaters. Happy, happy loaches. LOL!

There are various avenues to acidifying tank water, from super cheap but tiresome, which is to soak peat moss in a bucket of water for a few weeks, then strain it and add it to the tank, to easy; a bottle of black water concentrate. Add it a spoonfull at a time until you determine how much you need per gal. to achieve the acidity you want. For such a small tank, you might be as well off with the prepared mix. It's not very pricey.

However, very few pet stores keep each tank with ideal water for each species. I suppose they really can't, so the chances are that the water you will bring them home in will be at best, neutral. So hold off making any more adjustments to the water until you have them and acclimate them to it. Then, slowly, over the course of several days, use whatever solution you decide on to acidify a bit.

Rasbora are pretty hardy and would do okay in your tank as it is, but if you do give them more of what they do best in, they will positively glow.

Otherwise, don't drive yourself to distraction trying to play chemist. It's not as if you are trying to spawn them and it's always better to acclimate the fish to the water than the water to the fish. As long as you keep the water in the ranges you have established, you will be fine.

Just take your time acclimating them when you get them home and for that, any clean 3 gal. bucket or other container will do. As long as the ambient air in the room where you are keeping the tank is no more than 4 - 6 deg. lower than the tank temp, you really don't need to float the bag. Lay the bag into the container, cut off the top to allow the fish to gently slip out and slowly exchange bag water for tank water. If you do it in a warm room so the container doesn't get cold, the tank water will acclimate them to the tanks' temp along with its chemistry.

If you do one cup of bag water out to 2 cups of tank water in about 4 - 5 times over the course of about 1/2 hr., they should be fine. Then net them into the tank and replace the lost water with fresh. Do it with the tank light off and the room lights dimmed, as they will be coming from total darkness. Once they are in the tank, leave them for at least an hour with only room light before you turn on the tank light.

It will be tempting to feed them. Don't. Leave them be until the next morning then give them a light feed. If they show color by Noon that day, you will know they have settled in. The next day, start adding the acidifier and if you keep at it over the course of several days, they should display the colors for which Harlequin's are famous, but is rarely ever seen in pet store tanks.

The trick of preventing the fouling of any tank, particularly such a small one, is to feed the fish just enough to maintain them, but not a speck more, so your greatest challenge may be in preventing your Little Miss from feeding them every time she gets near their tank.

Have fun. Ours are all long ago grown and gone and I miss them, even though one of them once feed foundered our senior sire, (But Mommy! He was hungry!) those really were the best years of our lives.

A mini tank likely helps with snail squashing... not as big an area to search! :)

That's a good point about the pet shop's water. Makes complete sense. I think I'll continue with the 50/50 water for now and leave it at that (not expensive for tiny tank). Since I posted, it has lowered from 8.2 or higher to 7.8 or 8.0 (can't decide which colour matches best on the chart). It's softening the water, too... the KH is down to 70 ppm, which will make it a lot easier to adjust the pH later, right? I'll pick up the concentrate when we get the fishies on the 9th. The rule is to change no more than .2 pH per 24-hour period, correct?

I didn't know about the low lighting for acclimating, so thanks for that tip, too!

I think I'll try and feed them when she's not around for a little while. If she sees me lift the lid for any reason, she's gonna be in there like a dirty shirt. I'm sure her Backyardigans characters will "want" to visit the fish at some point. We'll have to watch her like a hawk for a while. Ah... two-year-olds!

Ah yes, the Twos. Enjoy it while you can. I'm not sure what you meant when you described the Backyardagans, but long ago, on a particularly bitter winter night, I awoke around 2 a.m. thinking I had imagined the sound of a whinny, which; considering the proximity of our house to the barn, should have been impossible. Then I heard it again, very close.

Our boys; then 4 and 6 years old, had their ponies in their bedroom. (But Mommy! They were cold!)

One was a Welsh, the other a fair sized Shetland. Both had more coat than a mountain goat in January and our barn is so well insulated that with all of the live furnaces occupying it at time, no water bucket ever developed the thinnest coat of ice in the deepest freeze.

Try explaining that to little kids who love their pets. However, the real fun began years later, when they got their driver's licenses. LOL!

BTW: Just a thought, but if you are going to be using bottled water to do 50% changes, even in a 6 gal. tank, you might want to do some numbers crunching on a few years cost of water and see if it might be worth your bottom dollar to look into an under-sink RO unit. We have one from Home Depot that only cost around $130.00 and came complete with a 5 ga. pressure tank and counter faucet.

In his pursuit of the "perfect" cup of coffee, my husband bought it to use in his Bunn, then I started raiding it for some of my fry tanks and was so impressed, I ended up installing a far larger one in my greenhouse/fish room.

But you also have to be careful about using demineralized water in a FW fish tank. It will come out of the unit 100% pure, but the fish still need some levels of minerals in their water. However, if what is coming from your faucet is liquid rocks, an RO unit may be just the ticket for you and beats hauling jugs of water from the store.

ROFLMAO!!!! Did you take a photo? :)

Long story... we share a well right now with our neighbours because there is no water on our 8 acres at all. What comes out of there is definitely liquid rock, which is why we're getting tap water from hubby's workplace in town right now for the tank. We get so much water damage on our appliances and faucets, etc. it's just ridiculous. Our neighbour had her kitchen tap come off in her hand from corrosion... and it was only 3 or so years old. We should have bought stock in whatever company makes that CLR cleaner, lol.

So then 5 years ago we joined the local pipeline association with the expectation of a project going forward in our area. They'd be tapping into the main line going from the South Saskatchewan River to our nearby town. This has dragged on for all that time because not enough people were signing up. Finally this year, we got the number and finally this thing is going in. For the last month we've had crews of backhoes and pipe-laying machines all over the place, then directional boring crews and equipment drilling the lines under the houses. Jackhammers in the basement to bring up the lines. Connection crews after that. I think there's just two more crews left - the guys to cement in the gaping hole in our basement and the guys that install the water meters. I'm hoping we'll have river water by the end of the week, and if not that soon, at least by Christmas! Yay! We'll be doing a mass replacement of faucets all over the house, plus the bathroom sink and the water heater.

I think we'll live with the water for a while and see how it goes before we invest in anything. Even if an RO unit is worthwhile (we'd have to price it out up here in Canada where everything is more expensive), we'd probably delay getting one for a few months, with Christmas expenses coming up and all. If the water needs altering, I'll rather get a unit downstairs at the source, which I would think would be more expensive.

And we're expecting a new little one in July now, too. :) Maybe (s)he'll be mezmerized by the aquarium and fuss less than Erin did as a newborn! I can dream can't I...

Alas, no photos. I didn't think of cameras then and by the time I might have, it was all over. The boys and the ponies ware all back in their proper beds.

It was the middle of the night in the midst of what turned out to be the Great Blizzard of 67, so it was all I could do to keep my irritation, and fears- in check. My husband, who had made an emergency trip to see his ailing father was stuck in a motel somewhere between here and Akron, OH and the roads were closed, so I was on my own with the boys, the horses, the "pet" pig, the chickens and in places, 15 ft. snow drifts. Thinking back on it though, it was in many ways, a quite magical time.

I don't know about newborns being mesmerized by fish, but would bet that the "pet" that Erin will find irresistable might not be them so much as a real live baby doll.