Tropical Fish Forum
Think Fish Tropical Fish Forum => Introductions and hello's => Topic started by: Paddy60 on October 20, 2016, 07:46:32 PM
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hi all glad to be aboard and hope to learn from you guys, just getting back into tropical fish keeping after having a 250 ltr tank some years ago and found it alot of work.Now gone for a small fluval edge 23ltr to start with.Fishless cycle complete after 8 weeks i think, but still cant tell from test kit if ammonia is zero or got a trace , hard to tell between colours. anway going to go for a siamese fighter and 5 or 6 celestrial pearl Danio,s Thinking of using a prefilter and reducing flow rate to accomadate the fighter,hopefully this will not affect the stocking capacity. Any advice please
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Welcome back to fishkeeping and to the forum, Paddy60 :wave:
Well done on the fishless cycle. How long has your ammonia been showing this zero/trace reading? This might help give us a better indication as to whether it is indeed zero or a trace, and whether or not you're "good to go" in terms of getting fish.
The tank should probably be fine size-wise for a Siamese Fighter Fish but I think it'd struggle with the celestial pearl danios as well or indeed any other fish. Looking at the Thinkfish Fish Profiles as well as the more up-to-date Seriously Fish site http://www.seriouslyfish.com/species/celestichthys-margaritatus, they seem to require a bigger tank. Additionally, these micro-sized fish are best kept in larger groups - see the comment about 20+ in this link and the rationale. Small cories are a possible option with SFFs but, again, they'd really require a bigger sized tank and to accommodate an adequately sized shoal of them.
As for the filter, I'm not familiar with pre-filters, so someone else may be able to comment on this.
Hope this is helpful.
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Hi Paddy60 and welcome to the forum. :wave:
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Hello, and welcome to the forum.
The ammonia is very difficult to read at the trace level. I'm not sure the colour rendition on the chart is perfect, and it can depend if you're reading it under fluorescent light, incandescent bulb or sunlight. I tend to use the nitrite test for zero as the nitrite bugs grow later and slower than the ammonia ones, so if nitrite is zero then it's safe to assume that the ammonia bugs are happily in place, too.
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ok,thanks for the tip
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Hi @Paddy60 form a recent new member, I've already had some great tips from the members on here, a very friendly and helpful forum.