This all sounds very good - a word of warning - you need to keep up diligently with the gravel vacs, especially with an undergravel filter. Undergravel filters lose their effectiveness if too much detritus is allowed to build up on the substrate. The gravel can become clogged, and that just doesn't work = you will end up with ammonia/nitrite spikes, because you have both excess waste creating extra ammonia as well as insufficient flow through the filter to allow the bacteria in the gravel to actually be able to deal with the ammonia that is present.
Have you looked into running the UGF as a REVERSE undergravel filter? It definitely is worth a read. A RUGF can actually be better than a regular UGF, because it won't clog up as easily. Is the UGF air driven or driven by powerheads? If driven by powerheads (which I would recommend) it's actually pretty easy to reverse the flow of water as well as to add a sponge filter to the powerhead to capture particles in the water, before it reaches the gravel.
Yes, I did mention the sterbai's cory. I didn't realize that you had a UGF. I would not have recommended any cory with a gravel substrate, especially one with an undergravel substrate. Sorry. The reason is that the gravel can cut up (or wear down) their barbels. These wounds can then be infected by a build-up of decaying material in the gravel. Some people have had success with cories in this scenario, but I think that they are a minority. Most people, especially new folks, will struggle with cories in this type of set-up. In general, cories prefer a much finer substrate, such as sand. They pull the sand into their mouths and work it through their gills... they are constantly digging around the substrate like that. It is very cool to watch, but unfortunately, it isn't something that you can see with gravel.
Yes, unfortunately, five banded barbs are harder to find than tiger barbs. Tigers are a much more easily found fish, but can be quite nippy, unless kept in very high numbers (12 or more). But 12 Tigers (which are fairly stocky fish) would take up well over 2/3 of the available stocking space in your tank. They are very cool fish, but at 3 inches long and a very thick body, they are a fairly large bioload per fish, as compared to five banded or other barbs.
Another barb that would work in a community set-up like you are planning is a cherry barb (not rosy barb). The cherry males are a bright red, especially if you have multiple males and females. The males will compete for the attention of the females and be far more brilliantly colored. The females are an orangy color.
Yes, flake food (or pellets) are a great staple food for the fish. This should be the primary food for the fish. You can offer a variety of foods, such as frozen bloodworms, daphnia, etc. I feed my fish frozen bloodworms (defrosted before hand in a small amount of tank water - takes about 5 minutes) once a week, after the weekly water change. Then, I fast the fish for the next day. The other five days, my fish get tropical fish flake food. Whatever they can eat in about 3 minutes (plus I drop in some shrimp pellets or algae wafers for my cories) before bed - they get more of the food after dark.
This is good. You shouldn't need to do the small water changes. You should be able to just start with your standard weekly maintenance routine. Doing two changes a week of smaller volume is fine, as is doing a 30-50% weekly water change. I normally do a 30% water change weekly, and a larger one once a month.
If you plan to go to live plants in the future, you will want to change your filter. Plants can struggle with a UGF. You may want to consider an external filter, if you decide to add plants. (Having the powerheads will be helpful for a planted set-up, as one of the biggest problems with plants can be circulation. Adding powerheads is a great remedy (or preventative method) for many types of algae. (And while changing the substrate, you will have to remember that your gravel is currently your biological media, so you'd
need to either run the filters in parallel for a while, plus maybe adding some to the external filter to help to seed it with the proper bacteria.)
And if you so choose to do that, putting sand in as the substrate would enable cories to thrive. Sand is actually much cheaper than gravel. A 50lb bag of play sand, properly cleaned, can be a great substrate for all fish, but especially cories.
Best wishes with your new fishies!
) So, I wanted to be sure to rescind my previous recommendation, and explain why.
