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Smaller fish do not necessarily mean hardier. That being said, go buy 3-4 cory cats. They don't get very big and they help keep the tank clean by cleaning up any bits the angels let get past them. Also, angels are fairly hardy fish. They look dainty but they are not feeble by any means.
If you want to speed up getting fish into the tank, ask the pet store to give you 5-10 gallons of their conditioned water. Take a couple 5 gallon buckets with lids, ask them to fill them. A smaller place will likely do this no problem. A place like Petsmart, not so much. If you go 50% conditioned water, you could put some fish in right away. I'd start with the corys and scout for some primo angels. I would do a black, veil, lace as one for certain. Look for red eyes. For the other, maybe a marble or a silver. Look for veil (long fins) and lace (lacy fins) if possible. Again, ask the petstore for better angels than the plain ones.
Cautionary tail if you go this route. Stay with only a few fish, namely the cories Fanatic mentioned. While the instant conditioner will allow you to drop fish in right away, the tank still needs to cycle. Usually the instant stuff will hold you over until this takes place. The fewer fish will help prevent a massive ammonia spike. The conditioned water idea is your best bet, unless you know someone who had an established tank and can give you a used filter sponge or something.
A used filter sponge is a good call too. Whenever I moved a tank, I tried to take as much water with me from the established tank and about a week out, I cleaned the filter so that it would be reconditioned by the time I moved but also, not bloated with muck.
I was a pretty heavy contributor to this thread over the last decade, but when I moved to the new house just over 3 years ago, I sold my last tank an African Cichlid tank. It was a masterpiece, full of fully colored male peacocks and mature Synondontis Multipunctatis cats as well as some pretty exotic plecos (I kept the water fairly neutral to accommodate these species). I just didn't have the time to appreciate it. All I ever did was water changes and feedings. I never sat down and enjoyed it. It was just work for me. I get the itch every now and again and I have a spot that could hold a 100 gallon tank quite easily, but not until at least a couple of the kids go to college. If I ever jump back in, I'll be back in here and document the whole process.
Test your water. The fish that were in there and died may have cycled the tank. You may not need to do a water change.Redwes25 said:
Thanks. Definitely going to test the water first to see what it looks like. Test kit arrives from Amazon today.
It very well could be good to go right now. Those fish put bacteria into the water as well as ammonia. Let the two work together for a few days and you just might have well conditioned water by now.
Would love to do real plants and toss out the plastic ones we bought. Figured a small tank wouldn't support them but if it would help the environment then probably worth the extra effort.
Live plants require an extra light which I'm guessing would require a new hood for you. To do plastic plants right, buy the same type of plant in multiple sizes and clump them together. They are way lower maintenance and look pretty good when done right.
Basically have this hood which has LED lighting built in - https://www.aqueon.com/products/lighting/led-economy-full-hoods. Would a low light plant or two like a Java fern work?
Not sure at how much wattage those put out. I got out of the game before LED's really took over. Was still doing florescent when I bailed
Tested water on Friday and was 1.0 ppm for ammonia so not fully cycled. Added some bacteria to speed up the cycle. Going to retest soon soon and see if at 0 and then add some ammonia t make sure it cleans it up.
The inch-per-gallon rule is kinda flawed and I wouldn't bother following it when stocking a new tank. For example, a 10 inch fish in a 10 gallon tank would be a really bad idea. On the other hand, you could probably exceed an inch per gallon if the fish occupy different levels of the tank (e.g. some bottom feeders and some top dwellers). The inch/gallon rule also doesn't account for different tank dimensions - for example, you can stock more in longer tanks than higher tanks because fish swim horizontally. If you still want some guidance, aqadvisor is a nifty tool - it's a stocking calculator that tries to take some of those nuances into account. A single betta or a school of cardinal tetras with a handful of panda corys patrolling the bottom would be solid choices for a 10g IMO.
This is close, but a bit off. The reason you can put more fish in say a 45 gallon long over a 45 high, is the 45 gallon long (48 inches by 12) has more surface area than the 45 high (36 inches by 12), where as a 55 long (also 48X12) can't house as many fish as a 56 high (36X18). The surface area is where oxygen enters the water. That's why we put air stones in tanks. Not for the bubbles in the tank, but for the ripple at the top which increases the oxygen diffusion into the water. The bubbles in the tanks are purely for aesthetics whereas the ripple actually has a purpose.
That's definitely an important consideration if oxygen will be at a premium in your tank - pet stores are a good example. Their holding tanks are always stocked to the max, thus having high O2 demands, so it's not a coincidence that most of those tanks have air stones in them. In normally-stocked healthy household tanks though, it's pretty rare to run into issues with inadequate oxygen. The surface agitation produced by a standard HOB or canister filter is usually more than enough to facilitate the necessary gas exchange even in a tank with a relatively small surface area. There are some situations (heat treatment for ich, etc.) in which adequate O2 can be a concern, but under normal circumstances, oxygenation should not be a big worry IMO.
I would suggest the aqadvisor tool - you can enter your tank dimensions, filter, and current fish, and it will give you feedback on how full your tank currently is. You can play around with hypotheticals and see if your tank can handle an extra school of fish, things like that. It’s not perfect (probably a little conservative in most cases), but it’s a lot more useful than the inch/gallon rule and can offer some really helpful guidance IMO.
If I had to guess, I'd say the Giant Danios account for a lot of that panic. I've never kept them, but I know some places recommend a minimum tank size of 30g for them, since they are pretty active and can get relatively big (as the name implies). This is a projection though, as aqadvisor assumes adult-sized fish. Of course, it's not exactly a crisis right now if they're only an inch long.
Absolutely. A 40g breeder tank, for example, has fantastic dimensions and you could probably stock it with more than that. You could probably do the guppy pair, 6-8 corys, a couple schools of tetras, and a centerpiece. I've found that bettas are hit or miss in community tanks - some coexist with the other fish perfectly fine, others lash out. For other centerpiece fish ideas, I love dwarf cichlids - Bolivian Rams, German Blue Rams, apistos, and so on. In my experience they're way less aggressive than larger cichlids. You could probably have a pair in addition to the other fish.Dinsy Ejotuz said:
Oxygen is not a concern in new tanks. People buy a few fish and drop them in there and love the tank for a while, then they pop into the pet store, something catches their eye and they ask if it's compatible with their current community. At just about every big box pet store, the answer will be yes, even if someone asks, "will this oscar be OK with my tetras?" The answer will be, "yes, the oscar will be fine." There will be no mention of how the tetras just became a food source as long as they make the sale, but I digress.caustic said:
You don't need any more cories in that tank. I would rather have 3 more tetras than a single cory. And a honey gourami would be a fantastic feature fish.
I got into salt water fish in college, I couldn't tell you why or how but it was s hit. . I never had much, but I sunk every last dime I had into it. You're dead on, tons of disappointment. There was so much satisfaction when it was working. I had an awesome set up. It wasn't a big tank either, but I had tons of coral. My set up survived 2 short moves. Then I gradated and took a job across country. I let the tank with my parents, about 6 weeks later they gave it to their interior decorator
Just gave it to them! I was so mad. Almost like a finding out my dog had been put down.
This is awesome -- I didn't even think to look, but would much rather have five one-ofs. Thanks!
Seconded.
Yeah, I'd definitely endorse them although you'd need a LOT to make a difference in a big tank. I had a group of 10 in my 75 for a while (that slowly dwindled down to nothing over a few years) and I'm not sure they made a huge dent in the algae in my planted tank. (I still had to spend 10 minutes every week or 2 scraping brown algae off the glass and my slower growing plants still got some build up) Maybe I fed them too many algae wafers so they didn't have to work for it......
As a general rule, the so called cleaner fish like plecos, farlowellas, chinese algae eaters and otos don't really clean the tank. They may mow down line through a patch of algae, but they aren't going to tidy the place up like an aquatic butler. You're going to be scraping no matter what. An old credit card or one of those magnetic algae scrapers is the real key to keeping the tank clean. Oh, and regular water changes. Buy whatever algae eater you want based on how it looks and behaves. Of all the fish I've owned over the years (big predators, green terror tank, yellow lab/daffodil tank, Angel tank, African Peacock tank), plecos are my all time favorite fish. Green phantoms, blue phantoms, red tail sternellas , gold dot, albino bristle nose, royal clown, royal farlowella, blue eyed, are all incredible and some not so hard to get (bristelnose) and some quite impossible (blue eyed). On a side note, I've owned every single one of those plecos at one time.
Is there a shortage of these guys right now or something?
The Sunday speaker at this event has his own Youtube channel and is an incredible resource on just about any subject you want to dig into. Google Aquarium-Coop + the subject you want to learn about and there's a great chance he's done a detailed vid on it. Planning to buy some stuff from his online store to throw some $$ his way.
The Saturday guy - Joey Mullen - has a youtube channel with over 1mil subscribers ("KING OF DIY"). I watched a few of his vids when I was first getting into this. He doesn't do any DIY as far as I can tell. I looked into him a bit and learned the guy is highly controversial on the various aquarium websites. I'm not entirely sure why, but people seem to really hate him for the most part.
His whole channel used to be DIY projects. Then, a couple of years ago, he decided to turn his garage into the aquarium gallery. But once he realized how much it all cost (somewhere near 6 figures I believe) he made a video crying on his channel and basically begging his followers to fund it....and they did....in like 2 days.
