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Went and got my bargain 4ft tank & stand the other week, have finally cleaned it up and painted the back black. Canister filter arrives today and it's nearly ready to start setting it up and getting it cycled. Also grabbed myself a small tank to use as a quarantine tank when I was checking out a LFS yesterday, they had some decent prices on fish as well so I'll have to visit when I'm ready to start stocking. This is what I'm thinking for stocking the new tank  Any suggestions on stocking ideas though? KTS fucked around with this message at 02:13 on May 24, 2019 |
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May 24, 2019 01:29
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How about a gimmick tank... Badis and bacopa Corydoras and cryptocorynes Yellow labs and black slate iwagumi Straight leaf rosette plants (vallisneria, blyxa, sagittaria) and pipefish
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May 24, 2019 02:35
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KTS posted:Went and got my bargain 4ft tank & stand the other week, have finally cleaned it up and painted the back black. Canister filter arrives today and it's nearly ready to start setting it up and getting it cycled. Also grabbed myself a small tank to use as a quarantine tank when I was checking out a LFS yesterday, they had some decent prices on fish as well so I'll have to visit when I'm ready to start stocking. I'd get at least 5 more kuhlies, if you want to see them you need to make sure they're feeling secure and that means safety in numbers. Maybe swap out 5 silver tips for 5 kuhlies? I like your choices, aside from the rummy nose which I think can be a bit sensitive to water conditions and the panda corys which in my experience can be a bit touchy when they are new after shipping, the rest are solid easy care fish. I have heard the silver tips are a bit meaner or more active than many tetras, they're less of a peaceful fish and more of a rowdy fish without being outright aggressive like dwarf/three spot gouramis and cichlids can be. So they might not be problematic in a 20 fish school but that is where I'd expect behavioural problems with the fish you've chosen. Because you're going for a heavily stocked community your rummy noses will be your canary in the coal mine for water quality problems and you can expect to see them lose colour and get ill first if you skimp on water changes or if you have ammonia spikes or other issues with your cycle. I'd start by stocking the black neons once you've cycled the tank, and then give it time for the tank to mature and the filter catch up with the fish load, then add the silver tips, wait a few more weeks or until everything settles down, then maybe the kuhlies, or pandas just because it's so useful to have a bottom dwelling fish to keep the bottom of the tank stirred up, then between the rest it probably doesn't matter because you should be 4-6 months in and the tank should be a lot more mature by then. You can add plants right from the start as long as you don't let your ammonia levels during cycling go over 2ppm, and it can be a good use of your time to work out which plants do well with the lighting you have. Java ferns are pretty solid but with bottom dwelling fish like corys and loaches I always make sure to trim their hairy roots fairly short as they can become a tangled mess which traps fish if they are left to go long. Anubias are easy to keep unless you get unlucky and have plants with the Anubias rot virus, in which case the rhizome will go brown and fall to pieces. Crypts are pretty nice to plant and forget if you have a substrate that suits them, they don't need much care, root tabs every few months and no trimming required apart from removing brown leaves every now and then. But you can get a nice looking tank just from rhizome plants if you have thin neutral substrate like sand. If I could give any advice at all it might be to understock until your tank is well planted and established, and maybe that means holding off on the gouramis and rummy nose until you're sure everything has settled down. See how it looks when you have half your fish in, and if it looks too crowded you can rethink if you add any more. I don't mean add a few of each type, I mean stick to one school at a time so you can see how they behave and how much room they take up as a school.
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May 24, 2019 04:54
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Would it be worth scrapping the loaches completely then, and up the cory's and one of the tetra numbers? 20 Silvertip 15 Rummynose 15 Black Neon 10 Panda cory 2 Honey Gourami gives 100% stocking as well, rather than having the Kuhli's in a minimum size school
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May 24, 2019 10:23
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Yeah that probably would work better. I don't worry too much about hitting 100% since that is calculated for adult sized fish and most fish are sold at a juvenile size; for a brand new tank I'd tend to aim well under to start with to give the filter a chance to catch up, and for a mature tank I've had no problems going over 100%. I don't think the calculator takes plants into account either as they add an unknown amount of biological filtration.
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May 24, 2019 12:11
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Awesome, that sounds like the plan then. Just have to wait for the rest of my stuff to arrive along with my Dr Tims so i can start getting it all together and cycling
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May 24, 2019 22:55
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I have a strange problem. I have a pair of kribs with 18 black neons some emails and 4 amanos. They breed all the time and are fantastic parents and end up giving a bunch to my lfs. I do a 25% waterchange every week and when I do this when they have fry, it's either the male who chases the female away from the fry or its visa versa. He can be really aggressive sometimes, I've seen bloody bruises on the female and she keeps trying to get back to the fry. After 24 or 48 hours they are fine and both look after them. When I do a water change I don't match the temp of the tank, it's cold water going in. I guess I'm triggering something by doing this?
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May 25, 2019 01:01
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Lord Kinbote posted:I have a strange problem. I have a pair of kribs with 18 black neons some emails and 4 amanos. They breed all the time and are fantastic parents and end up giving a bunch to my lfs. I do a 25% waterchange every week and when I do this when they have fry, it's either the male who chases the female away from the fry or its visa versa. He can be really aggressive sometimes, I've seen bloody bruises on the female and she keeps trying to get back to the fry. Why don't you match the temp of the water?
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May 25, 2019 02:47
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That's a pretty common tactic to induce spawning for lots of fish.
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May 25, 2019 04:03
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Yeah, even my shrimp would go nuts and get all horny after a water change
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May 25, 2019 04:05
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About to do a bunch of work on my tanks and figured I'd make a quick video to share. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQmuQWn9PDk
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May 25, 2019 20:14
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Nice video, I'm jealous of the Frontosas.
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May 26, 2019 04:05
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I've got two completely different issues I'm dealing with at the moment. First, my rainbow shark seems to have flipped a switch, and has gone from mostly docile and good community fish, even when I had him in a 20 long, to pretty much 100% a dick. I've had a 75 gallon planted tank for about 5 months now, and he was fine for the past 4.5 months. Just in the past week, pretty sure he chased my siamese algae eater out of the tank, and I've lost a couple cherry barbs in the past few weeks that might be his doing as well. He's even started chasing the bigger fish, an angel and a black molly, which he never did before. It's such a pretty fish, and he loves just poking his head out of his little cave through the java fern in front of it. But if he is the one causing the fish deaths, I just don't know if I can keep him. LFS said they could take him, and that's probably what I need to do, just never thought it would be so hard deciding to give up a fish. Second, I had what I thought was a single assassin snail that got moved over from my previous smaller tank. At some point I thought I saw another smaller assassin snail that was a stowaway on some plants, but then never saw it much again, and hadn't seen the original around much either. Recently I've noticed what I thought were some little bladder snails maybe, but upon closer inspection I think they might be baby assassins. I also saw my original assassin and one nearly the same size for the first time in weeks. My fear is I may now be overrun with assassin snails. I previously used the lone snail to control a bladder snail outbreak in the previous tank, and I don't think they cannibalize each other, so I'm not really sure how to control their population. Anyone have advice on dealing with that?
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May 26, 2019 04:47
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Assassin snails are not going to survive without food so you might end up with a bunch of tiny empty shells as they unsuccessfully reproduce. They'll go after newly moulted shrimp if you have any. If you are mindful of overfeeding I think you'll be okay as they don't breed that quickly and they only eat meaty foods. As for your rainbow shark, maybe he hit puberty? You might be able to add more hollow caves or tubes or similar at one end of the tank so that he has a definite territory and might leave the rest of the tank alone instead of trying to claim all of it.
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May 26, 2019 05:09
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Stoca Zola posted:Assassin snails are not going to survive without food so you might end up with a bunch of tiny empty shells as they unsuccessfully reproduce. They'll go after newly moulted shrimp if you have any. If you are mindful of overfeeding I think you'll be okay as they don't breed that quickly and they only eat meaty foods.
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May 26, 2019 15:09
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I wonder if they eat fish poop, that would probably have undigested proteins in and snails probably aren't picky, right?
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May 26, 2019 15:18
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They're eating one another ;-;
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May 26, 2019 20:03
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What about detritus worms, daphina, nematodes, and other microfauna that just sort of live in your tanks whether you want them to or not? They might prefer a big juicy snail but when there's none around they can slurp up tiny worms with the ol' proboscis.
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May 27, 2019 05:44
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Lost another cherry barb yesterday. No sign of disease and water is fine, I think it's got to be the shark. As for the snails, they definitely live off something in the tank because my original loner has thrived after he eradicated the bladder snails. I think my fish store will take them as trade-ins once they're big enough, so maybe I'll just become an assassin snail supplier.
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May 27, 2019 15:14
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How do I make sure my kuhlis are getting fed if they hide all the time
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May 27, 2019 18:01
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Feed them at night when it's dark, feed them food that falls to the bottom where they can get to it easily. Mine for the longest time would only venture out at night but have recently started hoovering up anything that the rasboras miss even when the light is on, and I've had them probably six months now. It just takes time for them to feel brave, plus the big wad of susswassertang that they can easily hide under if they wanted to probably makes them feel better too. I've heard it said to not worry too much about kuhlies, if there is loose food in the tank they will find it for sure. They seem much more thorough about sweeping for food than corydoras are, they're just also much more shy.
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May 27, 2019 19:16
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My female apisto has been hiding a lot and not eating much recently, she came out just now and is just hovering in place gulping water, and I see this little white patch on her side - it doesn't look like ich to me, does anybody have any guesses? She's also not upright at all, more like a 45 degree tilt. All the other fish in the tank seem fine. Edit: I set up my quarantine tank (good thing I had it ready!) and moved her over, I have some ParaGuard on hand which has malachite green in it, which is what I see is recommended for what it looks like this might be (cotton wool fungus?), so I'm going to try that. No idea why this happened, the tank has seemed to be doing really well recently, staying very clean, good water. Mozi fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jun 2, 2019 |
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Jun 2, 2019 16:16
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I've got a frontosa moved over into a hospital tank, 99% sure it's got a case of float. It's looking more and more like I'm going to need to jam a surgical needle into his belly and massage the air out, but the thought of doing that kinda freaks me out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3nvuNYNt8A
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Jun 2, 2019 18:17
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One of my Dambas seems to have picked up an eye injury, which is a little concerning. A white spot with clouding around the rest or it : I'm kind of used to never ending scratches and scrapes on them as they are toothy bastards and spent most of there time arguing about who is the biggest by biting each other on the face. Eye injuries is a new one though, I'm assuming treat antibacterial (melafix / similar) and keep an eye on it? By way of a penance for lurking and not contributing here is my new arrival settling into my new nano tank. 
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Jun 3, 2019 12:39
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quote:Everything Must Go SALE!!! FINAL WEEKEND Someone got politics in my fishtank.
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Jun 4, 2019 03:49
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Interesting. Its almost like politics are a thing that impact our lives daily in ways we aren't always aware of.
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Jun 4, 2019 07:09
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*Votes for Trump* "Mah imports!!"
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Jun 4, 2019 09:01
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My sick apisto did not make it  while the white fungusy spot on her side cleared up (possibly due to the medicine,) she had more and more trouble breathing. I saw her on her side on the bottom of the quarantine tank breathing heavily and did a large water change as quickly as I could but she did not recover (I'm pretty sure the water was fine, as the daphnia I had put in a day earlier for her to snack on were still living.) I think there must have been some other underlying issue, but I have no idea what that might be. At least all the other fish seem to be healthy still.
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Jun 5, 2019 15:19
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Sort-of-on-topic, is there a Saltwater/Reef thread anywhere? I searched but I can only find one archived last year...
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Jun 5, 2019 15:44
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That was the only saltwater thread, but there are a few of us that keep saltwater tanks here. I don't think it's so different that we couldn't handle that discussion in this thread too.
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Jun 5, 2019 16:11
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I'm interested enough in salt water tanks even though I don't plan to ever keep one myself (too poor), I'd like to see SW posts here. I was following the other thread and was sad to see it die. I'm certainly interested in keeping a brackish tank one day and there might be a bit of cross over?
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Jun 5, 2019 17:40
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Stoca Zola posted:I'm interested enough in salt water tanks even though I don't plan to ever keep one myself (too poor), I'd like to see SW posts here. I was following the other thread and was sad to see it die. I'm certainly interested in keeping a brackish tank one day and there might be a bit of cross over? I keep a salt and a fresh tank, I'd happily post about the SW tank here if that's kosher. The major differences (in my personal experience) are in nutrient management. In a planted fw tank you want to maintain a balance between light, nutrients, and CO2 if you're doing that. The tropical rivers and lakes we're emulating have a lot of nutrients in the water. In a reef tank you want very high light levels, and much lower overall nutrient levels for coral to survive. Tropical reefs are quite low nutrient. If you're only keeping fish I don't think they're so different. Fish are hardier than plants and corals. For your brackish tank you wouldn't be keeping coral, so it'd be closer to a freshwater tank than a reef one in my opinion.
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Jun 5, 2019 18:32
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Well I'm sitting on this gear at the moment: PicO DB18 - All Starphire w/ Starphire cover, black Silicone Tunze 9001 Skimmer Apex Controller w/ Temp Probe, pH Probe, EB8, Display Module Apex Lunar Simulator Module EcoTech MP10wES (old white case version) Eheim 100w Heater AI Prime - Black AI Prime Tank Mount Tunze Osmolator (w/ big tub o' Kalk) BRS 5-Stage RO/DI unit w/ 2 x 20g Brute Tubs ~25lbs of Marco Rock 1/2" Black HDPE for the bottom It's all about 5 years old and I never started the tank. None of the equipment even touched water. I was just going to sell it, but I'm thinking I might bu a second prime, upgrade to a 40g breeder or similar and get a sump.
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Jun 5, 2019 19:20
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Looks like the makings of a solid setup there. I'd def go the sump route if you plan to use the Apex, would be too busy in the main tank otherwise. If you do get a sump I'd say sell the Tunze skimmer and pick up a non-hob model.
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Jun 5, 2019 20:24
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Does anyone run a canister filter? If so, do you have a favorite media? I'm using what came with my ehiem but I'm betting that there's room for improvement
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Jun 5, 2019 20:30
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DeadlyMuffin posted:I keep a salt and a fresh tank, I'd happily post about the SW tank here if that's kosher. 
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Jun 6, 2019 02:01
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DeadlyMuffin posted:Does anyone run a canister filter? If so, do you have a favorite media? I have a few canisters around, I usually buy some seachem matrix if I see any on special and I've also tried biohome ultimate. I am running one eheim Ecco pro with the ceramic media it came with (got rid of the plastic media to make more room for ceramic). It seems fine too and even the media in the aqua one canister I bought most recently seemed really good, very porous ie you can touch it to water and it becomes wet all over due to strong capillary action, the media itself looks smooth. Best modification I've found to canisters is to use a prefilter sponge and keep the bigger muck out of the canister, use less mechanical filtration, maybe one fine sponge and a layer of floss, and the rest ceramic. It might mean more gravel vac to get dead leaves and so on out of the tank but then they aren't sitting in the canister rotting.
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Jun 6, 2019 03:41
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I've got myself a canister filter for the new tank I'm setting up. I have 1 tray with a coarse, medium & fine foam pad then 3 trays of lava rocks for it
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Jun 6, 2019 09:52
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Enos Cabell posted:Looks like the makings of a solid setup there. I'd def go the sump route if you plan to use the Apex, would be too busy in the main tank otherwise. If you do get a sump I'd say sell the Tunze skimmer and pick up a non-hob model. Yeah considering that. The Tunze is apparently a beast of a skimmer for the size, rated to 47g, but if I sump it I'm likely going bare bottom SPS so I'll need to overskim.
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Jun 6, 2019 14:19
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Can anyone recommend an outlet timer? I've bought a few now and none of them work reliably.
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Jun 6, 2019 16:26
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