Planning For A 125L Tank

No sand mountains here, thankfully, but as the tank's up against the wall, I had intended to put the taller items at the back and around the corners, whilst spreading the shorter items around the front of the tank to create depth. Instead, I've effectively lined the edges and created a clearing in the middle, so I'll have to put that right!

Thanks for the reply Matt. The night mode is just blue light, so I'll knock that on the head.

I've got got an hour-long sunrise/sunset either side of a 5 hour block with red/blue/green LEDs at 70 and white at 55. It provides light bright enough to see what's going on, without stressing the fish like higher brightness does. Will the plants do best with equal levels of R/B/G?


So I know this tank's only been running for days, but I've been checking amonnia/nitrite/nitrate and my readings haven't changed from what they were previously (0/0/40 - the tap water reads 40 for nitrate too). At what point will I see a change (if at all) and when does it become safe to start adding more fish?

I want to add the following:
3 panda corys
2 female cockatoo apistos
1 clown plec
10-12 small schooling fish

Can I add the corys, apistos and plec together, or is that too much additional bioload for the tank? If I have to do it in stages, how long do I need to leave between each stage? Should I hold off on adding the plec until the tank's more mature, or will it be fine if I toss in a bit of courgette or an algae wafer? I've got plenty of bits of wood in the tank already.

And does anyone have any particular favourites when it comes to schooling fish? I'd like to keep some fish that actually move around the tank together, rather than just scattering across the tank which is what happened with my first tank when I inherited a mix of neon and black tetras. Any ideas?

Well the green leds are pretty pointless in many ways they plants will reflect green light but they will absorb the blue and red and they will enhance the colours of your fish too...  turning the green leds off will likely make little visual difference anyway

Over the years I've had many different species of shoaling fish. I've not kept rummy noses, but I currently have espe's rasboras (in the fish profiles on here as slender harlequin) and these sort of school. It's the nearest I've ever had to schooling. Sometimes they swim as a group, at other times they split into smaller groups which swim together. I have 10 and it's common to see half a dozen or 3 or 4 of them swimming together. There are 3 closely related species - my espe's (Trigonostigma espei), hengel's rasboras (T. hengeli) and the slightly larger harlequins (T. heteromorpha). They should all behave similarly.
(espe's and hengel's have several common names usually something rabora eg lambchop rasbora, copper rasbora)

I have both rummynoses and embers - ember will group - but rummy’s swim as a group int he same direction - it is very different and a stronger behavioural trait than harlequins etc.

Whilst you can add a female of another species and it shouldn’t cause fighting it probably won’t interact with the male as you might be hoping... it’s also possible that if you add a female of the same species that they will not get on and end up fighting tho... what are your goals?

Sounds sensible to me - you would want the same species as your male I believe...