Hello, I have just bought a Rena 52 gallon tank (240L). At the moment I have just put plants in and treated my water, so it's very early days for me.

How long should I leave it before I introduce fish? The shops is telling me a week but the Rena intrustion manual says three weeks.

I fancy haveing Angel fish, mollies, tiger barbs, dwaf gourmi. I do like disscus but am unsure I can have them together with Angels. How many of these fish could I have in my tank?

I will be most gratefull for any advice

Cheers Brads form Plymouth

hey welcome, have a read of this : http://www.fishforums.net/content/New-to-the-hobby/113861/http-www-fishforums-net-index-php-showtopic-113861/ dont add any fish yet, if you follow that thread it should become clearer.

If you have a look at the sticky threads concerning tank cycling then they will be able to help you a lot more than I can in terms of that. In simple terms you want to make sure that bacteria cultivate in your tank and filter to convert compounds that you don't want, like ammonia and nitrite, into less harmful compounds, like nitrate, that your fish are more tolerant of. Once you have done this then you can begin to add fish slowly.

One general rule, although there are exceptions, with regard to fish stocking is that you should never have a ratio of less than 1 gallon of water for every inch of the full adult size of all the fish (total gallons/total inch of fish >= 1); e.g. if you bought a 2 inch Kribensis for your tank then it would need 4 gallons of water as they reach a full adult size of ~3-4 inches and you would only have a maximum ~63 inches of stocking left.

Another general rule is that the full length of a fish should always be less than half the width of your tank.

If you have some money to spend I would suggest buying the first couple of Baensch atlases as these will prove very useful when selecting individual species for your tanks. In terms of comparing what species are compatible with each other then asking here, searching the forums and using search engines can provide useful research although you should always look to double check any advice given with at least one other source.

In terms of the fish you are interested in I am only familiar with tiger barbs. People generally agree that if you get a group of 6+ and ideally 8+ then they will spend so much time regulating their own pecking order that they will leave most of your other fish alone, however, I couldn't say either way if they are compatible with the other fish.

Good luck with the tank and welcome to the forums.

EDIT: With regard to the formula of total gallons/total inch of fish then I'm referring to the number of U.S. Gallons. So a 240 litre tank should be ~54 Imperial Gallons total volume and ~67.5 U.S. Gallons total volume. (240 litres = 240 kg * 2.25 = 540lbs / 10 = 54 Imperial * 5/4 = 67.5 U.S.)

This post has been edited by Karuna: Nov 26 2006, 09:04 AM