Advice On Stocking New Aquarium Please

Hello

Sorry to introduce yet another thread concerning what to stock in a new aquarium.

We Newbies have a SuperFish Home 80, 80L tank with oversized internal filter.  The size, in centimetres is w60 x h45 x d30.  The Community Creator indicates we could stock to 96L, because of the oversize filter and the width of 60cm would mean a max length of a mature specimen of 10cm.

After 3+ weeks of fishless cycling we're seeing water parameters starting to come round to "acceptable" levels.  Current parameters are:-

         Ammonia            <0.02 ppm
         Nitrite                   0.06 mg/l
         Nitrate                   34   mg/l
         pH                        6.8
         Temperature          26   C

Our current thinking on stock levels are shown in the tables below.  The first table is the total stocking, ordered by position in the Tank Area.  The others are stages along the way to, hopefully, introduce the hardiest species first and not unduly overload the bio-system.

Option 5, the Rosy Tetras, is very much an optional option as we're not sure about the possibility of fin nipping by them on the Guppies.  Plus we may well change our minds if something else more appealing comes out of our many visits to the supplier or advice from the forum.

The percentage value for each section is the percentage stock level against the, assumed, 96L capacity.

Any / all advice gratefully received.

Many thanks.


                                  Qty     Size (cm)  Total (cm)    Tank Area          Temp C     Hardness
SuperFish Home 80                  
Yellow Honey Gourami    4              4              16        All                     22-28        vs,s,m,h
Assorted Male Guppies    8              3              24        Top/Middle        24-28         m,h,vh
Rosy Tetra                     5              3              15        Middle               24-28        vs,s,m,h
Cherry Barb                   4              4              16        Middle/Bottom   24-28        vs,s,m,h
Sterba's Cory                 2              6              12        Bottom              24-28       vs,s,m,h,vh
Assassin Snail                4              2                0                                  N/A        vs,s,m,h,vh
Japonica Shrimp             4             4                 0                                18-27       vs,s,m,h,vh
7 Species                     31                              83         
                                                                    86%         
Stage 1                  
Cherry Barb                   4              4              16
Assassin Snail                4              2                0
2 Species                       8                              16         
                                                                    17%         
Stage 2                  
Yellow Honey Gourami    4              4              16
Japonica Shrimp             4              4                0
2 Species                       8                              16         
                                                                    17%         
Stage 3                  
Assorted Male Guppies    4              3              12
Sterba's Cory                 1              6                6
2 Species                       5                              18         
                                                                    19%         
Stage 4                  
Assorted Male Guppies    4              3              12
Sterba's Cory                 1              6                6
2 Species                       5                              18         
                                                                     19%         
Stage 5                  
Rosy Tetra                     5              3               15
1 Species                       5                               15         
                                                                     16%         
Complete                  
7 Species                     31                               83         
                                                                     86%         

Hi Adenann, welcome to the forum 

I too would be interested to know how you can get a reading of ammonia below 0.02 (my test kit measures 0 then 0.25) and nitrite at 0.06 (again my kit goes from 0 to 0.25) 

And can I check, are you doing a fishless cycle as in the method on here in the Filtration & Cycling section?


Comments on your fish list:

Yelllow honey gouramis - in a 60 cm long tank, go for 1 male and 2 or 3 females. The surface area is not big enough for 2 males to set up territories, and the territory of these fish is based on a certain amount of surface. With yellow honeys, the males are the ones with most orange on the tail and the females tend to have a darker line running from nose to tail. It can be quite faint and even broken but only females have these lines.

Guppies do better in hard water and with a pH of 6.8 you most likely have soft water. You can check the hardness on your water company's website.

Rosy tetra and cherry barbs do better with more than the minimum. I'd get at least 6 of each. If you leave out the guppies that will give you more room for them.

Sterbai cories are pretty big cories. In a tank with a 60 x 30 cm footprint I would go for one of the dwarf species - C. pygmaeus (pygmy cory) C. habrosus (salt & pepper cory) or C. hastatus. And get 10 of them as they do better in big groups. I see that you have 2 sterbai cories in your list but all cories need a group of at least 6.




If you change your list to
Honey gourami x 3
Rosy tetra x 6
Cherry barb x 6
Pygmy cory x 10

that would be a better fit, for tank size, species numbers and water parameters.
Alternatively, go for either rosy tetras or cherry barbs. A big group of 10 of just one of them would look stunning. [I should confess that I'm in the 'few species but lots of them' group rather than the 'minimum number of lots of species' group  ]

Assassin snails - I'm not sure that your tank could grow enough pest snails to feed 4 assassins. I'd get less to start with, you can add more if you find the tank is growing pest snails faster than 1 or 2 can eat.



As Colin says, you can get virtually all your fish right from the start. But I would leave the cories, of whichever species, till the tank has been running a few months. Cories tend to do better when put in a tank that has been running a few months, that is a tank that has grown biofilm over all the surfaces.

The first lesson for fishkeepers is don't believe the shop.

Most shops will advise using a bottled bacteria product. But most of them contain the wrong species of nitrite eating bacteria. Besides which, shops make money from selling you bottled bacteria and then medication to cure the fish that get sick during a fish-in cycle, and replacement fish for those that die.

The danger is that although the tank looks cycled, it isn't and you find yourself doing a fish-in cycle. The readings may be virtually zero but you haven't yet added a source of ammonia - from a bottle or made by fish - so the water should have low or zero ammonia and nitrite.

The safest way to go is to buy a bottle of ammonia to test the cycle. It isn't very expensive compared to everything else. Most people seem to buy it from Amazon or Ebay, though my local DIY shop stocks Kleen Off Household Ammonia which I used earlier this year to cycle a filter.

Once you have the ammonia, add a 3 ppm dose and test next day. If either ammonia or nitrite is above zero, the tank is not cycled. Then just follow the method on here to get the tank ready for fish.
If both readings are zero 24 hours after adding 3 ppm ammonia, you'll know the tank is safe for fish.



I should also add that test strips are not highly regarded. Those test kits with liquid or solid reagents usually give more accurate results. Buying on-line is cheaper than real shops.
And I'd check the hardness reading with your water company's site to be on the safe side. GH 8 is a bit on the low side for guppies.

One tip for liquid reagent testers is that most brands have  2, sometimes 3, bottles for nitrate. One of these needs shaking even longer than the instructions say or it gives false results.

Hello there and welcome to the forum. 

Nice tank you've got there. Please keep us posted on your progress - I love hearing about other tanks and the stage of deciding what to get/working with the community creator is quite exciting.

 

Current advice is to get another hobby for a few weeks and leave the tank alone in a wait-and-see mode, for the 6 to 8 weeks cycle.

I also use Tetra 6-in-1 test strips with visual comparison against the charts plus using their smartphone App. The values I then average 3 results for pH and the 2 Tetra results for everything else.

Interesting thought from the independent retailer.  "We're water keepers, not fish keepers.  The fish are incidental to good water management and in some respects get in the way of that".

The fishless cycle process is a great time for taking up the hobby of working out which fish to stock, in which numbers, etc, so you're doing a great job there.

I find the test strips accurate for nitrate and nitrite (and easier to read for these than liquid-based tests) and chlorine, but find the reading for PH lower and the reading for GH higher than other tests, while the KH result doesn't really resemble any of the colours.

I think the quote about keeping water, with keeping fish being incidental to that, is quite true ie if water quality is sub-optimum, health problems for the fish do set in or take hold. Having said that, even perfect water quality won't eliminate problems, and unforeseen problems still occur.

Just to check - have you been adding ammonia to the tank? If that zero ammonia and zero nitrite are the results 24 hours after adding a 3ppm dose of ammonia, then you are indeed cycled.
But if you haven't added any ammonia (you don't say whether you have or not) then there is no way of knowing if the tank is ready for fish. Those zeros could be zero because there has been no source of ammonia and then when you get fish they shoot up.


Halfbeaks.
Hmmm I wonder why the original owner of the site put it in miscellaneous rather than livebearers? Like most livebearers it needs hard water, that being more important than salt. Salt can be added to the tank but as long as the water is hard and alkaline (pH over 7) it should be fine without salt.
Seriously Fish has more info on these fish. Minimum tank size 60 x 37.5 x 30 cm. They suggest 1 male to several females in smaller tanks. These fish can be shy and easily outcompeted for food.
Preferred water conditions - hardness 10 to 20 German deg (178 - 357 ppm) and pH 6.5 to 8.0.
But you said earlier that your GH is 8 German deg which is too soft for halfbeaks.

Forktail rainbow aka forktail blue-eye, Pseudomugil furcatus.
Needs hard alkaline water and the same minimum tank size as halfbeaks so these two would work together. Need at least 8 to 10 of them.
Preferred water conditions - 15 - 30 German deg (268 - 536 ppm) and pH 7.0 to 8.0
But at GH 8, your water is far too soft for these fish.

False julii cories - Corydoras trilineatus.
Thinkfish had to move host a few years ago and the fish profiles before the move had a category 'corydoras' which included all the 2 inch cories such as these. The category vanished during the move and never came back.
I would just substitute sterba's cories in the CC. Trilineatus are slightly smaller but their requirements are pretty similar.
Their range is 1 to 12 german deg hardness (18 to 215 ppm) and pH 5.8 to 7.2
At GH 8 your water is fine for these fish.
They would be OK in your tank size, but as they need to be in a group of at least 6, they would eat quite a hole in your stocking allowance.

My water comes from Cambridge Water Company, and the area boarders with Anglian water. I also have hard water, and have found my water supplier gives accurate information
http://cambridgewater.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/85/kw/water+hardness/session/L3RpbWUvMTQ3ODgxNDA0My9zaWQvN0VPbkdrM24%3D
With Anglian water they provide this section to put in your postcode and find information on your water
http://waterquality.anglianwater.com/map.aspx
I sometimes struggle to find fish that I like that work in a community tank with the water I have in this area, but I also struggle with the difference in information given on different sites as well. 

@Littlefish

Following up on your useful link to CWC's website I've done some more digging around as to who supplies where.  On map data on Anglian Water's site, we are in CWC's area, by about 4 miles from the CWC / Anglian boundary.

As noted earlier CWC give their hardness as 17dH.  The figure that I've now managed to find for Anglian is lower.  It's only 16.699dH!  Near enough equal to me.  I've got enough trouble getting a correct reading from the Tetra test strip in whole numbers, let alone to 3 decimal places!

@Sue

I think this now reverses your advice, at least based on water hardness, that Halfbeaks and Forktails would be OK but is now too hard for False Julii.  As far as I can tell Sterbas would be OK as they seem to be in the range all the way from very soft to very hard.  I think it also means that Guppies are back in the frame too!

I'm very impressed with the 3 decimal places, that makes all the difference. 

I have also recently been looking into the pH of my water, which comes out of the tap at 7.4, and goes up to around 8.4 within 48 hours, regardless of temperature, dechlorinator, etc. @Sue has mentioned the possibility of CWC adding carbon dioxide to the supply, which gasses off over a relatively short period of time. This explanation makes a lot of sense to me as far as my change of pH is concerned, and it is something I keep in mind now if I ever have to do a lrge water change or set up a quarantine/hospital tank in an emergency. Don't want to be shocking an already poorly fish with such a huge change in pH as well.

I'm assuming that our locations are very close, as you have mentioned areas that I know. My most frequent haunt is MA @ Scotsdales. If you are prepared to head towards Soham then give Amwell Aquatics a try as well. It is a very good independant LFS and sometimes makes a change from a large chain like MA. I go there most weeks to collect live bloodwroms for my dwarf puffers. 

Apologies for the lack of good news on the water parameters in this area, but thought I'd let you know about the pH thing as sometimes more knowledge is helpful in avoiding issues.

Now we're really in it!

We've stocked our tank with 3 fish species trying to row back from the small quantities of large numbers of species following @Sue comments on my original stocking plan.

We finally decided on "only" 5 x Cherry Barbs, 6 x Yellow Honey Gourami and 4 assorted pairs of male Guppies.  On advice from MA, instead of the Assassin Snail we were thinking of, we've also got a Zebra Snail.

The Barbs and Guppies are all males.  We think we got 1 male and 5 female Gourami but I'm not sure if we've managed to accidentally get 2 males after all.

Barbs and Gourami were first, last week, and have settled in very well.  They all seemed to be a bit pale at first, possibly from being stressed.  Now they've calmed down and started to colour up.  Which is why we think we might just have an extra male Gourami.  If it turns out we do, I've sounded out MA about swapping one of them for another female.

The Guppies went in yesterday, 17/11.  They're a bit hyper at the moment but have calmed down a bit overnight so hopefully peace will be restored soon.

We've dropped our plans for Rosy Tetras and any sort of Corydoras, the latter because we've twice had conversations with MA along the lines of "in order to feed the bottom feeders you have to slightly overfeed the others".  Not something we feel happy about and not, for now, wanting to mess about with sinking pellets for them.  In any case, we were looking at Corydoras as sweepers up of left over food.  The Gourami seem to be doing that on their own, foraging in the gravel substrate.

According to the CC, we're just 71% stocked so we think we've resisted the temptation to cram as much in as possible and allowed scope for a little bit more if we find something interesting.  Like we might add some Japonica Shrimp later, once everything has settled.

Can't help being a little paranoid about keeping them health, we do a count up every morning.  The Barbs are easy to count, the Gourami not quite so as a couple of them are a bit shy first thing so we waste a lot of time waiting for them all to be accounted for.  At the moment, the Guppies are a bit tricky too as they're so fast moving it's easy to miscount.

I've attached a few pictures below.  The difficulty of trying to get decent shots on a mobile phone has caused my very first hobby to be resurrected.  Out with the trusty camera, manual focus, aperture and exposure and use a tripod.  I can see an awful lot of time being wasted from now on.  Just sitting down watching can easily run off with an hour.

@Littlefish

I've still not quite got to the bottom of variance in pH readings.  After your post about pH rising after 48hrs I ran a test of my own with water straight off the tap left standing.  Both readings came out at &.6.  I've also been on to SeaChem about their pH Alert disc I had that went cloudy.  They very quickly sent a replacement which, for now, is showing a steady reading between 7.4 and 7.8 colours, which I'm assuming to be 7.6 too.  Checks before we bought the Guppies at MA still came out at 8.5.

I must say I'm a bit disappointed that there doesn't seem to be any standard or method of calibration across any of the testing products on the market.  Still, for what I have researched in this area, consistency of level is possibly more important than the actual level itself.

I've also contacted Cambridge Water to try and get all their parameters confirmed, not just the GH on the website.  No reply yet.