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.
@LittlefishI'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.