Advice On Stocking New Aquarium Please

Nice mixture of fish 

I found that honey gouramis, particularly females, spend a lot of time searching everywhere for bits of food, including the bottom of the tank. Males not so much because they couldn't spare the time from trying to attract the females.

Nerites of all colours are the best algae eaters in a fish tank. I find they don't eat anything else, but you do have your gourami bottom cleaners 

After what seems to be a very long time, we've finally reached our desired stock level .

We now have :- 5 x Yellow Honey Gourami
                        5 x Cherry Barbs
                        8 x Male Guppies
                        4 x False Julii Corydoras

Along the way we unfortunately lost Jimmy the Snail  (Grandson like things to have names, don't ask!).  He only lasted 10 days.  After clearing up the main patch of algae, he went walkabout up the side of the tank and back then sat on the substrate doing nothing.  Checked him out after a couple of days.  No bad stench like others had describe to indicate he was dead.  MA said they sometimes "go to sleep" and don't move around for days on end.  Propped him up near the glass to try and observe any movement.  Then his trap door fell out and left just a tiny blob inside.  I tipped out the remains, gave the shell a good boil and put it back.  I still move the shell around a bit so the grandson doesn't notice he's not moving.  I've no idea as to why he died so we're not about to rush out and buy another.

Only overnight this last Wednesday, one of our 6 Gourami decided to sneak into the internal filter/heater chamber and get himself trapped between the filter and the box .  So we're down to 5 of the original 6.  Although not killed by any illness, for now we're not going to replace him either.  It now leaves us with 1 male and 4 females.  I've, hopefully, Gourami proofed the box to stop up the only gap he could have got through, with a piece of sponge.

Today we completed our purchases with 4 False Julii Corydoras .  The very helpful people at Scotsdale's MA overcame my reluctance to go ahead with any sort of bottom feeders.  They've given me a few JBL NovaTabs to try.  However, I'd already realised that I could feed them without necessarily overfeed the top feeders.  I have been trying some Tetra Bloodworm and Brine Shrimps in a gel sachet for the fish we already have (from P@H).  No matter how carefully I add it, the blobs of gel very quickly sink to the bottom and get, eventually, cleaned up by grazing Gourami so it's occurred to me that this is an easy way of getting food down to the bottom quickly.  What with that, and the sinking pellets, I think we shall be alright.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to this and associated topics.

Good to read of your update - well done.

Agree with Littlefish - and your grandson isn't the only one to name is aquatic inhabitants; despite intending not to, I end up naming mine . Sorry to hear about the two fatalities - I had a similar episode with a fish and filter, but glad that you've taken the right precautions to prevent a recurrence involving anyone else.

Best of luck and enjoy your time watching the fish.
 

The JBL tabs are what I feed my cories too  Though I'm not sure about sticking them to the glass or the rice fish would eat the lot before the cories got near them.

I have found that shop workers can be a bit rough with snails. If they wrench them off the glass it doesn't do the snail any good. When I need to remove a snail for any reason I slide it up the glass till it falls off the edge. But I've also had snails just die on me. Maybe wait a month or two then try and find an identical one.

The NovoTabs seem popular with all my guests too.  It doesn't seem to upset the cories that everyone else is tucking in.  They just go for what's in the cloud of bits that float off.
MA's advice was to feed 2 tabs a day, cutting back to one if that seems too much. That was for the 4 cories and not the other 18.
What quantity should I use for the tabs?  I won't use them all the time,  alternating with Tetra Pro Colour, normal flake and gel with Brine Shrimps and Bloodworms.
MA gave me about 30 tabs to try. On the Net they seem to come in tubs measured by volume. How many are there in, say, 100ml?
Thanks. 

I'm glad someone worked that out  All I know is that my tub has lasted ages and it's not empty yet.
I have about 8 or 9 pygmy cories, which are smaller than trilineatus (false juliis) so my lot probably have less body mass than the 4 of adenann's. I feed one tab a day, half at lunch time and the other half at dinner time. Our mealtimes  I also beak each half into four pieces before putting it in the tank. And I feed flakes and a couple of tiny algae wafers in the evening for the stiphodons.
All the fish eat everything with the exception of the rasboras which don't feed from the bottom of the tank.

@adenann Sorry I misread your question I have a 250ml tub which is 150g so that would be 375 tabs, so I guess you could do the density calc if you wanted the other tub sizes

Perfect! Now we're all talking about and looking at the same thing! 
Thanks also for the information on how much to use.