Hi all,
I've kept coldwater fish for a few years now but I want to try my hand at tropical freshwater. I am redecorating a room in my house and have some new furniture that I'd like to put a tank on. This neatly brings me to my first question; tank weight and stability. The furniture I want to use as a stand is an Ikea Hemnes chest of 3 drawers. It has solid pine legs and the top is an inch or so thick solid pine board. The back and side walls are fibreboard. The tank I'm looking at having on the top of it would be 100cm x 30cm x 40cm, totalling 120L (that's 39.47in x 11.81in x 15.74in and 31.7 US gal) - judging by my calculations this would work out to be about 165kg (360lbs) in total weight, including the tank glass, and substrate etc. Do you think this furniture could take the weight? A friend is a carpenter who says he can help me strengthen it up if not.
Anyway, onto my potential stocking list. So, I went to a couple of LFS's in the past two days and checked out the tropical fish I like the look of. I've never liked the fancy frilly tails bred into fish (like those dreadful 'fancy goldfish'), they just frollock around the water as if they don't have the ability to swim normally. It's not right imo.
I've devised this stocking list (obviously to be implemented over a period of time species by species);
According to the AqA calculator, the tank wouldn't be overstocked by a fair bit even when full grown. Sound good to you guys? Tropical is new territory to me so I shall humbly take all the advice I can get!
I have a few questions regarding each species:
Red Cherry Shrimp:
I'd love to have some sort of critter in my tank. I adore the electric blue crayfish but after some research they are absolute buggers apparently. They tear plants up and stealth attack fish at night. I don't really fancy being host to fishy genocide so that idea was thrown out the window fairly quickly. I read a bit about Ghost Shrimp, but alot of posts on forums say the Red Cherries are alot more hardy and cheaper.
My thought is, a cleaner crew of four of them should do a decent job of helping clean the bottom of the tank of leftover food and bits of ****. Every little helps, right? I'm also under the assumption they are algae eaters, and may (dependent on the type of algae of course) munch on that?
Neon Tetra
As far as I'm aware, the hardiest of hardy. I've known about Tetras for quite a while but never saw quite the amount of posts on forums saying these were -the- beginner's fish due to being able to withstand noob cycling and whatnot. According to most sources, they love to school up and should be kept 6+. I went with 10 for 'safety in numbers' and because a bigger school makes for better viewing. Am I right?
Pearl Gourami
My centre piece fish. I've been researching this for about an hour alone. I'm torn between the different types of Gouramis, and how many. I cannot decide whether to get a Pearl Gourami (beautiful fish, saw them at my LFS) or after researching the species more, some sort of Honey or Dwarf Gourami purely for size reasons. According to AqA my tank could accomodate a Pearl (mature length of up to 4 inches), whereas a Dwarf or Honey would be 2 inches smaller. There is a lot of conflicting information on the internet too; some say get two males, some say get one solitary.
I'm basically torn between one Pearl, or two Dwarf/Honey. I think my tank (with a width of 100cm/39in) will more than big enough to accomodate two territorial males. They'd surely have enough room to **** off to the other side of the tank if they got in a tantrum with eachother? I'm leaning towards the Honeys because of the striking colour difference from the rest of the fish in the tank (the creative designer in me) - does anyone have any thoughts on this?.
X-Ray Tetra
I do like transparent fish. I saw some Ghost Catfish at the LFS but after further research they are apparently very hard to keep and if there's less than six they're likely to get stressed and die. So, I turned my attention to the X-Ray's, the Tetra substitute! Again 10 of them for schooling - am I right in thinking Tetras will not school together regardless of species, but actually form into groups of sub-species? IE. 10 Neon and 10 X-Ray will form two group, rather than a group of 20?
Black Tetra
See above.
Does anyone think I've missed anything? Am I (theoretically) overstocking in your opinion? Are there any species you reckon I should check out?
Species on my avoid list are:
Cichlids (Maybe in the future in another tank, but too expensive right now - I don't want them to kill eachother).
Angelfish (Too big).
Silver Sharks (Obvious).
Discus (Too big).
Thanks in advance for any advice!
I've kept coldwater fish for a few years now but I want to try my hand at tropical freshwater. I am redecorating a room in my house and have some new furniture that I'd like to put a tank on. This neatly brings me to my first question; tank weight and stability. The furniture I want to use as a stand is an Ikea Hemnes chest of 3 drawers. It has solid pine legs and the top is an inch or so thick solid pine board. The back and side walls are fibreboard. The tank I'm looking at having on the top of it would be 100cm x 30cm x 40cm, totalling 120L (that's 39.47in x 11.81in x 15.74in and 31.7 US gal) - judging by my calculations this would work out to be about 165kg (360lbs) in total weight, including the tank glass, and substrate etc. Do you think this furniture could take the weight? A friend is a carpenter who says he can help me strengthen it up if not.
Anyway, onto my potential stocking list. So, I went to a couple of LFS's in the past two days and checked out the tropical fish I like the look of. I've never liked the fancy frilly tails bred into fish (like those dreadful 'fancy goldfish'), they just frollock around the water as if they don't have the ability to swim normally. It's not right imo.
I've devised this stocking list (obviously to be implemented over a period of time species by species);
According to the AqA calculator, the tank wouldn't be overstocked by a fair bit even when full grown. Sound good to you guys? Tropical is new territory to me so I shall humbly take all the advice I can get!
I have a few questions regarding each species:
Red Cherry Shrimp:
I'd love to have some sort of critter in my tank. I adore the electric blue crayfish but after some research they are absolute buggers apparently. They tear plants up and stealth attack fish at night. I don't really fancy being host to fishy genocide so that idea was thrown out the window fairly quickly. I read a bit about Ghost Shrimp, but alot of posts on forums say the Red Cherries are alot more hardy and cheaper.
My thought is, a cleaner crew of four of them should do a decent job of helping clean the bottom of the tank of leftover food and bits of ****. Every little helps, right? I'm also under the assumption they are algae eaters, and may (dependent on the type of algae of course) munch on that?
Neon Tetra
As far as I'm aware, the hardiest of hardy. I've known about Tetras for quite a while but never saw quite the amount of posts on forums saying these were -the- beginner's fish due to being able to withstand noob cycling and whatnot. According to most sources, they love to school up and should be kept 6+. I went with 10 for 'safety in numbers' and because a bigger school makes for better viewing. Am I right?
Pearl Gourami
My centre piece fish. I've been researching this for about an hour alone. I'm torn between the different types of Gouramis, and how many. I cannot decide whether to get a Pearl Gourami (beautiful fish, saw them at my LFS) or after researching the species more, some sort of Honey or Dwarf Gourami purely for size reasons. According to AqA my tank could accomodate a Pearl (mature length of up to 4 inches), whereas a Dwarf or Honey would be 2 inches smaller. There is a lot of conflicting information on the internet too; some say get two males, some say get one solitary.
I'm basically torn between one Pearl, or two Dwarf/Honey. I think my tank (with a width of 100cm/39in) will more than big enough to accomodate two territorial males. They'd surely have enough room to **** off to the other side of the tank if they got in a tantrum with eachother? I'm leaning towards the Honeys because of the striking colour difference from the rest of the fish in the tank (the creative designer in me) - does anyone have any thoughts on this?.
X-Ray Tetra
I do like transparent fish. I saw some Ghost Catfish at the LFS but after further research they are apparently very hard to keep and if there's less than six they're likely to get stressed and die. So, I turned my attention to the X-Ray's, the Tetra substitute! Again 10 of them for schooling - am I right in thinking Tetras will not school together regardless of species, but actually form into groups of sub-species? IE. 10 Neon and 10 X-Ray will form two group, rather than a group of 20?
Black Tetra
See above.
Does anyone think I've missed anything? Am I (theoretically) overstocking in your opinion? Are there any species you reckon I should check out?
Species on my avoid list are:
Cichlids (Maybe in the future in another tank, but too expensive right now - I don't want them to kill eachother).
Angelfish (Too big).
Silver Sharks (Obvious).
Discus (Too big).
Thanks in advance for any advice!
We'll have to agree to disagree there, I think the Honey gouramis are lovely. SO are the pearls. SamlovesCorys has a point though, are large group of one tetra would be awesome! Nothing wrong with a mixed group, just personal preference.
