Hi,
My current tank is a 90L (60x40x40). It's been up and running for three years now. At the time I had read enough to know that I needed to do a fishless cycle, but information was a bit sketchy so I went to the LFS after my tank had been up and running for two weeks to enquire if my tank would be ready for some fish. 'Yeah sure' was the response. At no point was I asked about water parameters. Instead I was sold 7 dragon tail guppies. Two days later 3 were dead, I took the other 4 back to the shop, researched some more and realised that I was a long way of having fish in my tank! I'm not sure how long it took to cycle as I just used fish food but no ammonia, and I didn't keep the cycling records (a scrappy A4 sheet of paper), but it took at least 6-8 weeks.
I've now bought a larger Fluval Roma 240. It's been up and running for a couple of weeks with just substrate, plants and bogwood. Although I put some of the old filter media in the new filter, I haven't done anything else. Since then I've realised that the bacteria in the filter probably haven't had enough to eat to keep going, so I started with some ammonia two days ago. However, it just dawned on me that I can probably just move all the fish and hook up the old Eheim Classic 2213 alongside the new Fluval 306?
Is that correct? Will I still be able to do this now I've put one dose of ammonia in? It'll probably be at least a week before I'd have time to do a big fish 'n filter move, so should I just forget about dosing with ammonia altogether and just move the old filter? Or do I have to carry on cycling now?
Also, there's now quite a lot of a dusty-rusty brown sort of algae - which is probably diatoms - in the new tank. I'm hoping that will just disappear of it's own accord once the tank is sorted out.
And that brings me to the actual fish. We're in Hertfordshire and my water parameters are of the liquid rock-variety as follows:
pH 8.1
KH 14 dH
GH 19 dH
My old tank has gravel substrate, light to medium planted, some bogwood and a turtle and sunken warship lovingly chosen by my sons... Annoyingly it also has a lot of black-beard algae on my large piece of bogwood. At some point the tank was overrun with this, but using Seachem Flourish Excel has cleared it off the plants. However I can't seem to shift it from the bogwood. Would the hot water or 10% bleach solution method kill it off?
The new tank has eco-Complete substrate, light to medium plants at the moment, and two large new pieces of boxwood. The water is quite tea-coloured at the moment because I don't have a bucket large enough to hold these pieces. The plan is to get a lot more plants. I was hoping to current plants in my tank will grow so well that I could propagate some, but with the brown algae that looks a bit unlikely for now.
Fish are:
4 adult female platies plus a bunch of fry
8 cardinal tetras
2 dwarf gouramis (1 male and 1 female)
1 ancistrus bristlenose pleco
1 zebra snail
The tank is very peaceful with no aggression between any of the fish (or snail). The pleco is very shy and spends most of it's days upside down under a small piece of dogwood. At 2.5 years, it's also the oldest inhabitant of the tank.
The gouramis seem to like each other. The female has a very swollen belly though, so I'm wondering if she's full of eggs? At one point I spotted some bubbles floating on the water - which may have been the possible beginnings of a bubble nest but I think the tank maybe has too much current for the male to build this.
The platies and Snailbob are happy as larry in the tank.
Obviously I have now realised that these species want different water. The platies and Snailbob love the hard water, so now I understand why they are so happy The other fish will find it harder going, although they all seem to be ok at the moment.
I'm a bit stuck on what to do with my soft water fish. The local LFS's don't take fish back and I don't know any other fish keepers in my area (and if I did, they would be using the same hard water most likely). For the time being I'll think I'll have to hang on to them, but going forward, I'm looking to keep only fish that are suited to my water.
Because of my existing stock, I can't add cichlids, so instead I've been looking at rainbow fish.
I'd be interested to know if anyone here keeps rainbowfish, and if they have experience of mixing them with other species? I was hoping to get Boesmani rainbowfish but I've read that a 120cm long tank is the bare minimum for them, so I've decided to rule them out.
Smaller rainbowfish such a Melanotaenia macculocchi or Lake Tebera rainbowfish or praecox or Australian rainbowfish (M. fluviatilis) all look interesting. I'm less of a fan of long-finned fish, and therefore less inclined to consider Pseudomugil or Threadfin rainbowfish.
Any input on any of it would be enormously appreciated!
Many thanks.