Guppies

[chris-uk]

I've had my eyes on a filter since before I got the fish, just waiting till I have enough money. The tank is 12 litres. I have yet to cleana nd put in the stones. What does cycled mean?

Cycled is the term used for preparing a tank so that it contains the bacteria needed to convert the excretions from the fish (ammonia) into less harmful chemicals. Basically your fish spend their days and nights peeing in the water, in a lake or stream the pee flows away, in a tank you need to remove it. Cycling a tank can take months. Google "fishless tank cycling" and you should find some descriptions of how I cycled my tank by adding ammonia from a bottle over 6 weeks.

I thought I had researched about them enough but clearly I haven't so let's start from the beginning . . .

12 Litres should be big enough for one male guppy and three female guppies?

A lot of aquarists (I just tinker a bit and don't take the fish too seriously) would consider anything smaller than 40l unsuitable for keeping anything more than a single fish. For someone who's primary reason for keeping fish is to feed the young to a snake, it's debatable whether you have enough volume. I've not bred guppies, so can't comment about specific requirements. They are supposed to be easy to breed, but will need the correct water conditions to feel frisky.
Another thing with smaller tanks is that the chemical and biological balance is much more fragile, because there is less water to buffer the levels - a fish that excretes 5ml of ammonia in my 60l will increase the concentration less than the same fish in your 12l tank.

How important is the gravel and why?

The bacteria in mentioned above, they live on surfaces, not free in the water. The gravel is one place that the bacteria will colonise, the other major place is the filter sponge.

Do I need a specific kind of filter or will just a normal little internal box one do?

An internal filter will be fine in a small tank. I've got an internal filter in my 60l tank (as well as the filter that came with it that hangs of the back), an external canister filter is only necessary for larger tanks (although I'm thinking about replacing both mine with a single external which will be quieter and easier to maintain).

What is a "small bio-load"?

The bigger the fish, the more fish, the more fish pee. That's often termed the bio-load - how much life are you trying to support in the tank.

Do you have any pictures of your set up?

Thank you for the help so far and hope I can fix this before they get ill or die :/

Last thing, are you using untreated tap water? The chlorine in our water isn't good for fish. Best thing is to treat all the water you put in the tank with a conditioner which removes the chlorine, you can also stand the water in a clean bucket overnight and the chlorine will evaporate off.

Keeping fish is about keeping the water chemistry right, and it's much more difficult than keeping snakes. My cycled tank has been a nightmare since Christmas, I got lazy and ended up with an algae bloom, and from there I've be struggling to keep the tank balanced. In the last month I've lost 7 fish out of 16 to white spot disease and unexplained deaths. Luckily our beta is still okay, it's been tetras and panda corys I've lost.