500L Community Tank Help

[Uriel]

I have a 500l 91" x 18" x 21" Tank setup with an eheim 2028 professional 2 Filter. 2 300w heaters. 1 Intank and 1 hydor Inline. I decommisioned the tank 3 months ago and am now looking to set it up again and I had a few questions.

1. Is it safe to put the media baskets from inside the eheim into an existing fish tank that i have setup to try to build beneficial bacteria on them before beggining fishless cycling of the tank or is this dangerous or pointless ? They where cleaned in warm tap water before being put away but where not sterilised or similar.

2. I'm aiming at having a small shoaling fish community tank. I was thinking panda corydoras, 1 betta, and a couple of shoals of different tetra's or similar. Can anyone recommend any fish for this sort of tank and an approximate stocking level(I have no interest in over-stocking as panda cory require high water standard and i don't want to be doing massive water changes constantly). Also any help on order of adding fish. I know that panda cory's require a well established tank to thrive so i assume they are last. I'm not interested in any aggresive or semi aggressive fish. Sand substrate if that makes a difference.

3. Can I do a fishless cycle with plants in the tank, As there already in there and i don't really have anywhere to store them.

4. Is the tank large enough to support 2 shoals of 6-8 corydoras of different varieties. As I know panda cory's are quite picky so it might be useful to have a shoal of peppered cory or similar to hoover up and waste food from the sand.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Uriel and Welcome to our beginners section!

Unfortunately, pre-soaking your new eheim media in your existing aquarium will do practically nothing to help seed it for the fishless cycle. There's simply not enough ammonia and oxygenated water forced through the media in that situation.

Instead, the tried and true way to take advantage of mature media is to "donate" no more than one-third of your mature biomedia from the old filter to be put directly in to the trays of the new filter and then replace that 1/3 in the old filter with fresh material. You have to be creative. Sometimes it means taking scissors to sponges or just scooping out a certain amount of ceramic gravel, but limiting it to 1/3 will keep your current tank running smoothly, usually without a detectable spike in ammonia or nitrite.

Meanwhile the donated material is put into the uncycled eheim and ideally it should be right next to the main biomedia (the ceramic gravel or medium sponge etc.) in the water path. (probably the middle tray of a 2028?)... Now the time to perform this seeding is -after- you've already begun the fishless cycle and are confident that you've found the right type of household ammonia and have figured out exactly what dosing of that ammonia puts you at 4ppm or so concentration. That way you'll know that the transferred bacteria will have ammonia to process right when you move them over.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Uriel]

Thank You for your help, I'm starting the cycle today so will wait a day or 2 and then transfer mature media. Another problem i have run into is all of the fish I fancied for this tank seem to need mature tanks, Panda cory, peppered cory, cardinal tetra, neon tetra and black tetra all say they need a tank that has been matured for anywhere between 3-6 months. Is there a way around this aside from buying fish to mature the tank ? I have 2 angels, 1 red tail shark and a pleco in my other tank. I could split them up to mature the tank but i don't see how 2 angels or the pleco and red tail shark are going to be enough to mature a 500l tank anyhow ? Is there any fish that someone could reccomend for a peaceful community tank that don't require a mature tank.

Just thought i would also add my water stats

Tap PH 7.4 Ammonia 0 Nitrite 0 Nitrate 0
Tank Day 1 PH 8.4 Ammonia 4-5 Nitrite 0 Nitrate 0
Tank Day 2 PH - Ammonia 4-5 Nitrite - Nitrate -

 

[Wills]

Hi

Wow 500 liters great sized tank! Dont be afraid to put larger fish with your panda cories and especially dont be put of adding some south american cichlids in there as well as they are a great fish and would go great with your planned stock. And also ask for advice on fish you see around the net termed as semi aggressive as these fish are only usually aggressive when kept incorectly or in small tanks and then people get angry and upset because things went wrong - but with the level of caution and research you are going to Im sure your going to get along great

With regards to adding fish to a mature tank - this is often misleading - if you do a true fishless cycle then you will be able to add fish in with confidence of their success and thriving in your tank straight away especially with things like both the cories you mentioned. Peppered Cories are often a great fish to add to your tank early on after a fishless cycle

I would reconsider your choice of a male betta in that tank - today Bettas have been bred to such extents that their fins are so huge and decorative that they are no longer suited to life in large volumes of water and would be much happier in a small 5-10 gallon tank of their own. Because of their long fins they suffer in fast moving water which your tank will need due to the volume, they have to constantly fight the current to stay still because of their fins where as other fish are stream lined by nature to cope with this.

I think if this were my tank and I wanted a peaceful, active, easy to maintain, shoaling tank I would do something like this

5 Pearl Gourami - 2M 3F - though they could adapt either way - though equally there is a huge range of peaceful feature fish that would work in this tank.
6 Spotted Headstanders
10 Dwarf Neon Rainbowfish
20 Cardinal Tetras
15 Black Widow Teras
3 Hoplo Catfish
15 Panda Cories
15 Peppered Cories

Hoplo catfish are a larger relative of cory catfish and you will get some great interaction between the species. And despite the quite large size of the hoplos they are none predatory and just a chilled out fish - basically a giant cory And quite cool for a catfish when they breed they build a bubble nest!

Of course my list is by no means exhaustive but if you throw in a dozen or so species you want to keep I will help you out with your stocking plans

With regards to over stocking, IMO with good filtration and a responsible maintenance regime "overstocked" or "heavy stocked" tanks can often be the most stunning tanks. When you say water changes all the time do you mean you want to try to do a water change each week or every two weeks etc? Because that does dictate the stock as you say.

One other thing when people say that panda cories are fragile fish this is often because the internet is innundated with information from people that have tried to keep them in brand new tanks and either singularly or in trios or some similar issue that some simple reading would avoid. 99% of the time always question internet profiles as few of them are accurate - a few good sites to use though are seriouslyfish, planetcatfish, loaches.com and tropicalfishfinder.co.uk

Wills

 

[Uriel]

Thank you very much for your time and advice. Having researched more i agree that a betta would be a poor choice for this tank.

My fear of semi-aggressive fish stems from the remaining angels i have which seemed to go rogue about 6 months ago. Having been in the 500l tank 12 months 2 of them just seemed to go mental. They started by harrassing my panda cory's which i had to move to my quarantine tank but which still unfortunately died, not sure if it was from the harrassment or the shock of the move or both. They then started in and killed 2 of the other angels in the tank during the night. The other 2 angel fish i removed and then gave to a friend. I have no idea what initated this and checking the water chemistry showed no issues. I've heard they can be aggressive during breeding. Although 2 of the other Angel fish had paired off and all they did was defend the third of the tank they had layed in. Unfortunately this was doomed to failure as they had layed on the inlet pipe of my pump and i didn't realise until it was to late.

I don't mind doing reasonable tank maintenace(25% once a week) but i would just prefer to stock slowly and err on the side of caution. I know heavily stocked tanks look beautiful but then i also know people who end up doing 80% water changes once a week and given i currently use a bucket to fill my tank. 40 buckets a week seems more like an exercise program, than a hobby

1 more quick question. I have heard mixed opinions on depth of sand substrate. I was initially told more than 1inch less than 2inchs. As i was told at this depth the top layer has aerobic bacteria which help turn ammonia and nitrite into nitrate and the lower layer has anaerobic bacteria which turn nitrate into nitrous oxide which harmlessly gases off. Having read the beginners section here they don't reccomend sand over 1cm deep without something to turn it over as toxic gas pockets can build up. Will the cory's be enough to turn the sand over where it's 1 - 1 1/2 inch's deep or do i need something else to help.

Also i seem to have snails in my tank. Didn't realise till i upped the ammonia and they ran for the surface.

Sorry another quick question. Since i'm fishless cycling with a few plants in the tank is it recommended to reduce the light they get to slow there consumption of the ammonia or is it fine if i leave it as is and just have to top the ammonia up more often(as required at 0-0.25ppm).

 

[waterdrop]

Higher plant species (unlike algae) need about 4 hours minimum to get their elaborate photosynthetic machinery rolling and making some useful sugars for nourishment of the other cells in the plant. So I like to recommend that beginners keep that in mind, especially if they are having a morning and separate evening session of light in order to enjoy seeing their tank when they are home but to limit the light time to help avoid algae.

The algae problems in fishless cycling come because the high ammonia levels combine with light and trigger algae spores (ubiquitous in water, just like the various bacteria we take advantage of in this hobby) Having fewer light hours will lower the change of getting an algae problem but the plants do need some minimum hours of light to function and it varies wildly by species of plant. You can start with 4 hours, which can be increased by any amount if its all in one photoperiod, whereas if you have more than one photoperiod (note that I am -not- suggesting that a -siesta- will combat algae, just that less light overall per day will help (rumors that siesta periods help in and of themselves more than just having less light are false in my opinion) you need to think about the 4 hour thing.

Reducing the light to have the plants consume less ammonia is not a detectable thing from my own observations of fishless cycling cases over the years but its possible it occurs to some extent.. its just not something we think or worry about in my experience. Another thing we -do- worry about is trying to have the plants be healthy. If plants begin to die they increase the amount of ammonia (thus, plants during fishless can complicate the interpretation in both directions depending on if they are healthy and consuming ammonia or dying and giving off ammonia, but if they are healthy and there are not too many plants they are really not a big problem usually.)

~~waterdrop~~