First Fish Advice

[Rubyuk]

HI everyone.

First time to the forum....so go easy on me!!! (sorry if this is posted in the wrong area of the site

After eventual fishless cycling I was wanting your advice on which if any of these would be ideal hardy fish to home first for a complete beginner and if the others are suitable for a community set up,which would you add next and when etc.I assume you wait a few weeks after homing the first batch of fish? Also how many fish should you add at once to start with?

My final choices are not yet made,its more of a wish list of possibles I've compiled from looking round some LFS and reading etc.I'll be adding some bottom feeders much later. (The LFS's give such contradicting advice that I know its best for me and the fish if I ask here!!)

I've got some fish in mind of the same species so it could be an either or both kind of situation.

Platys
Honey Gourami
Harlequinns
Ruby Barbs/Five Banded Barbs
Red Eye Tetras/Glowlight tetras
Blue Rams/Bolivian Rams
Dwarf Neon Rainbows

Bottom feeders will be Corys

I was looking at some green Tiger Barbs and although LFS says they will be fine if homed last and in a group of at least 5 my reading indicates that they would not be suitable with the Gouramis/Rams/Platys.Is this correct?

The tank is a Juwel Vision 180

I've not done a Kh or Gh test but my water board tell me I have soft to Mod soft water.

I've done a Ph test on my tap water and its 6.5 (i'd say from the colour chart bearing in mind its the first time I've used the new test kit I bought at Christmas!)

p.s An LFS has kind of put me off Red Eye tetras now as he says as bad a fin nipper as Tiger Barbs I have to say in the books I've read they've always been listed as peaceful and social?

 

[waterdrop]

Hi and welcome to the forums Rubyuk!

You are right to get started working on learning about various fish for your stocking, this is much better than having to learn it the hard way by direct experience, although you won't be able to avoid some of that anyway! Many sources of information will conflict with each other and you'll just have to keep tallying them up and getting a better and better feel for each individual species as you narrow down your list.

The harlequinns and platies would definately fall into the hardy list, good for first stocking right after fishless cycling. Various danios also fall into this list although they are not on your list. I think perhaps the glowlights might also be really good community fish for you although someone else might comment on how hardy they are for first stocking, not so sure on that.

The platies of course are livebearers and I always think beginners should think twice about getting into the breeding thing right away. Buying any female livebearer always carries the possibility that she is already pregnant and buying both sexes virtually guarantees you'll have fry in the tank very soon. This then begins to change your stocking equations before you've had much change to even get used to what works for you as a beginner. Its just a personal choice ultimately though.

Always be suspicious of barbs for aggressive behaviour and any type of tiger barb especially so. It sounds like you've got a nice size tank though, so its a matter for further research. Note that there are special sections for individual types of fish on the forum.

Another excellent start that you are so familiar with your water already. A pH of 6.5 unfortunately is quite low for cycling and since you've already been warned about the KH, I'd suggest you might want to begin looking for either a single KH kit (I use the TetraTest liquid KH kit) or a KH/GH kit (the API liquid GH/KH kit is a good one.) The GH is not a bad thing to know but only the KH numbers are really something you act upon. When you have soft water you can get a much better feel for how any changes you are making are actually working. Fishless cycling drives the pH downward pretty hard and you may very well need to use baking soda (with the help of the members here) to bring the KH up and allow to pH to slowly follow it upward. If expense is a concern then you can wait until you get KH info from your water authority and some more pH readings from your liquid-based kit and talk some more here about it.

Anyway, sounds like you're off to a good start!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Ruby. I agree that the platies and rasboras are your best bet for hardy first fish. Let me go on another tangent though. The platies will do better in higher pH water while the rasboras will like your low pH water so I think I would start with the harlequin rasboras. Rasboras do best in groups of at least 5 because they do tend to shoal a bit. Once things are running and stable, the corydoras will make a nice addition to the tank and again prefer the lower pH and soft water. They will also do best in numbers of 5 or more. In a tank that size you also have room to experiment with one or two other fish that you like because the rasboras and cories alone will not fill it up. If you decide to go with some platies, I would stick to all males so they don't breed you out of house and home. I really love my livebearers but I have room to grow out the fry they produce and lots of tanks to hold them all. When you are first starting out, that is not something you can easily accommodate.

 

[Rubyuk]

Thanks everyone for your advice so far.

This is an awesome site but so many parts to it that i'll probably end up posting in the wrong section(s)

Is it possible to get fed up of seeing a newbie post here as I know I have hundreds of questions from my research and thats before I even have the tank set up,so I'm worried about posting too often and asking what will appear silly questions for the vast majority of you

To try and get as much initial info about my tap water contents I've just gone out and bought a liquid GH and KH test to go with the mini lab test I've already bought for PH,Amonia,Nitrites,Nitrates.

If I've done it right and if you count the initial drop you put in the test tube then to change my GH from Blue to pink took 4 drops which I calculate as a total GH reading of 80 ppm and my KH (including the first drop) took 3 drops to change from blue to yellow which I work out as a final reading of 30 ppm?

So my tap water has a PH of 6.5,GH of 80 and a KH of 30.

I'm sure someone will tell me what all that means in terms of my tank set up and the species I have on my 'possible' list.

I'm defo going to have to discount the metallic green barbs I've seen which is a shame as they look fantastic and also the red eye tetra which is another shame.Still I have (I think) plenty of nice looking fish on my potential list and I think/hope most/all of them will cope with my tap water parameters?

What do people think about the Emperor tetras/Purple emperor tetras as an LFS has suggested them as being hardy and different or would you stick with the glow lights?

 

[waterdrop]

Yes, in my opinion it was probably worth it for you to go the route of checking on the KH. You need to read the instructions very carefully now and confirm that you are interpreting the drops to the numbers correctly. The one we care about is KH, not GH. Sometimes the kits work such that each drop is 1 german degree of hardness and sometimes they are different and one drop means some amount in ppm or mg/l, which would be the 10's you have mentioned.

If you are doing interpreting it correctly and the 10's are right for your particular kit, then the 30 ppm/mg-per-liter reading you've got is extremely soft water, which would go along and make sense with that low pH of 6.5 that you are getting. Here on the forum and a lot in the hobby we mostly discuss carbonate hardness in german degrees of hardness because historically that's become a very common standard in the "everyday" sense, rather than the "scientific lab" sense. So your 30 would actually be a reading of less than 2 and with rounding we would discuss it here as "KH=2", meaning that there is very little calcium carbonate mineral salt in your water to buffer it against going acid on you.

A lot of us, me included, have this situation. Actually, it often seems more of us USA folks run into this, while the UK folks often have pretty hard water, so they deal with this less often. There are two practical actions we soft water people end up taking. During fishless cycling we can buffer the water using common kitchen baking soda (not baking powder!) and we do this just to bring/keep the KH and pH up in our "bacterial growing soup" during fishless. Then at the end of fishless, when we do the final big water change, we stop using baking soda and usually never use it again, as it moves the KH and pH around too quickly to be safe for fish (its not unsafe if you keep after it every day, but next to nobody has the time to be that careful!) Then, with fish, we soft water people have to make a decision whether water changes will keep our buffering up enough if we have basically soft water species, or whether we will have to take an approach of using "crushed coral" to slowly raise and maintain a higher KH/pH in the tank. "Crushed Coral" is a term used for bags of smashed up beach shells and broken corals that have been checked and cleaned and sold in a local aquarium shop usually. These will usually be put in mesh bags and fit in your filter and will have to be cleaned on a regular basis. More details can be had if you go this route.

For now I would be starting an aquarium notebook and periodically noting some tap water test results so that you can see how consistent (or not consistent) your water source is. I forget, have you found the right type of ammonia yet?

Don't worry about asking questions, when members spend time in the "New" forum they get a kick out of reading and helping the people who post.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Rubyuk]

Thanks Waterdrop.

My kh/GH test kit was the Nutrafin one that states to multiply the number of drops taken to change the test tube from pink to blue by 20 to determine GH in mg/L (ppm) and to multiply the number of drops taken to change the test tube from ble to yellow by 10 to determine the carbonate hardness in mg/L (ppm)

Obviously the science behind it baffles me,but as long as I can keep several species of tropical fish then i'm happy.

So to clarify:

I need to add bicarbonate of soda during the fishless cycling to stop my PH from crashing and stalling the cycle? If so,how much do I need to add?

After cycling and adding fish,if my test readings show PH dropping etc then I need to buy a netted bag of coral and put it in the filter? Can it be sinply left on the floor of the tank?

Re Amonia,i'm a little confused .

Amonia is toxic to fish but on reading the fishless cycling thread you add a source of this poisenous amonia and keep adding it on a daily basis?

The aquatic store where I'm getting my tank from has stated in no uncertain terms that adding my own amonia is not the way to go as you are adding a source of poison to the fish that will never completley leave the tank?

Do products like Tetra Safe start and Nutrafin Cycle effectively do the same thing but without having to buy a bottle of amonia and do they work?

I assume that as they are brand leaders in the hobby that thousands/millions of new fishkeepers must have success in cycling their tanks using either of these products?

This is the bit that I'm struggling to get my head round.

Also,during fishless cycling,do you add the live plants before or after? I was hoping to get my tank all set up with the decorations,live plants etc before starting,then after cycling I only have to add the fish.

Is this an acceptable way to go?

 

[OldMan47]

It will not take much bicarbonate to buffer your tank's pH. With a tank your size, I would start with maybe a teaspoonful and see where it takes you on pH and KH.
The crushed coral is only needed if you decide you want to keep fish that prefer harder water with higher pH as it will affect both parameters. This might be true if you decided that you would really rather keep platies than rasboras for instance. A small amount in any open space in the filter where it gets good flow would be the best place to put the crushed coral. It will very gradually dissolve over time and as it does will be raising the pH and KH.
You are right Ruby. The ammonia is toxic to fish and you don't want any in a tank with fish in it. What we do with a fishless cycle is to establish the bacteria in your filter that consume ammonia. That way the ammonia that happens naturally when there are fish in the tank will be effectively removed by the filter's bacteria. The pet shop is telling a half truth, there will always be some ammonia in any tank, whether or not you add any, because it is produced by the fish, decaying plants, any waste food etc. and it takes some finite time for the bacteria to remove it. There will be no more or less based on the ammonia you put in during the cycle though.
The safe start, Cycle and similar products will help you finish a cycle in about 4 weeks just like not using them. I have no idea how they manage to keep selling the stuff but your own comment about them being a big name may give us a clue. Most new folks in this hobby will just trust whatever they are told by the LFS and the packaging on the products.
Plants can be added during a fishless cycle if you wish. When you are talking to people on here make sure you mention any plants you may have because that can affect your chemistry readings and is something we would need to know to help you better.

 

[Rubyuk]

It will not take much bicarbonate to buffer your tank's pH. With a tank your size, I would start with maybe a teaspoonful and see where it takes you on pH and KH.
The crushed coral is only needed if you decide you want to keep fish that prefer harder water with higher pH as it will affect both parameters. This might be true if you decided that you would really rather keep platies than rasboras for instance. A small amount in any open space in the filter where it gets good flow would be the best place to put the crushed coral. It will very gradually dissolve over time and as it does will be raising the pH and KH.
You are right Ruby. The ammonia is toxic to fish and you don't want any in a tank with fish in it. What we do with a fishless cycle is to establish the bacteria in your filter that consume ammonia. That way the ammonia that happens naturally when there are fish in the tank will be effectively removed by the filter's bacteria. The pet shop is telling a half truth, there will always be some ammonia in any tank, whether or not you add any, because it is produced by the fish, decaying plants, any waste food etc. and it takes some finite time for the bacteria to remove it. There will be no more or less based on the ammonia you put in during the cycle though.
The safe start, Cycle and similar products will help you finish a cycle in about 4 weeks just like not using them. I have no idea how they manage to keep selling the stuff but your own comment about them being a big name may give us a clue. Most new folks in this hobby will just trust whatever they are told by the LFS and the packaging on the products.
Plants can be added during a fishless cycle if you wish. When you are talking to people on here make sure you mention any plants you may have because that can affect your chemistry readings and is something we would need to know to help you better.

THanks Oldman

 

[waterdrop]

Ah yes, very good advice from OM47. I always like to read and think about what OM47 has to say as I believe he has many more years of continuous recent experience as an aquarist than me and has a nice calm way of writing about it!

OK, I had to go looking in the "wayback machine (internet archive)" to find the old webpage I used to rely on for bicarb amount and I found it! Here's the quote: "One teaspoon of baking soda added to 50 liters of water can raise the kH of the water by approx 4 (german degrees hardness) without a major affect on pH." Anyway in your case you're not going to mind adding more than that because it will be a positive thing if you can get your pH up in the 8.0 to 8.4 range anyway.

Ruby, I'd like to stop here and make some comments. You seem to be a perceptive fellow, asking good questions and I certainly hope we won't overwhelm you with too much detail (one of my worst problems as you can probably tell.) Its just chance that you've stumbled across this particular web forum (TFF) and as a beginner, any normal person would find it pretty odd and overwhelming I suspect. It was quite a shock to me when I first came upon it after some web searches.

My own opinion is that it happens to be a pretty unusual place. It has a good share of very experienced aquarists, some of them even among the top practitioners in the world (designers for top public aquariums, judges for AGA and other things), but there are other web forums that have some of this also. What seems to be different is that somehow there is less of the combative, non-productive stuff here and instead, lots of information sharing and learning seems to go on. Its an international mix of mostly UK and somewhat less USA folks seemingly and a sprinkling from elsewhere around the globe.

The thing is, I've come to see it as pretty lucky to happen on this. I found that, in the longer run, the information here just "blows the doors off" the kind of stuff you hear in the LFS and is in fact the "real thing", the core of the real hobby that you would only build up by yourself if doing it intensively for many years. Of course its just a web forum, with all the usual imperfections that implies (misinformation, occasional trolls and other problems) but at its best its just great!

So to a beginner, the advice will seem really weird, very contrary to what you've imagined or are hearing in your local store. At times it will seem tedious in the extreme. The true hobby of tropical fishkeeping is in many ways very out of step with the feel of our current world. We're so used to computers and cell phones and everything happening in what we like to call "real time." Fish tanks are quiet, slow and relaxing and most things take place in them at a very slow pace. But of course, that makes them (fish tanks) precisely the perfect counterpoint to our modern stressful world, and thus our feeling here that this is one of the perfect hobbies.

Anyway, I really hope you and all the other beginners reading will "hang in there" with this because this forum offers a lot of valuable information and is a powerful way to jumpstart your knowledge as a newcomer.

There are a lot of beginner topics that are somewhat complicated if you get into them. Bottled bacteria products like SafeStart, Cycle, etc. are like that. There are some legitimate reasons to hold out hope that scientists (like Tim Hovanec, who I believe was mentioned?) will someday figure out a way to preserve and deliver the correct beneficial bacteria to us in a transportable/storable format. But that day is not here yet and the short answer is that yes, those products are "snake oil" for you, the beginner and you would do well to take that conclusion and save yourself the grief we've seen from countless other members.

Fishless cycling, is the main "weird" wonderful, fascinating thing for you to focus on as a beginner. It is not only the key to getting a working filter and clear healthy water, but is a way to learn a ton of basics in the process and thus to be a much more accomplished fishkeeper during your first year of the hobby.

If I get a chance later I'll give you my little speech about why the heck you need to do fishless cycling but in the meantime probably other members will give you theirs and probably you'll be in good hands with whatever questions you ask!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Rubyuk]

Thanks Waterdrop

Lots of detailed information.At last i've found someone who can write as lengthy posts as me!!!

Just to clarify though,I don't need convincing to do the fishless cycle,as I've never contemplated doing anything else but.

My only query as a novive was can this fishless cycling be done just as easily and quickly by adding one of the bacterial treatments like safestart and cycle as opposed to adding my own amonia into the tank.

The feedback appears to be pretty clear in that these 'cycling' products dont work,even though they are from brand leading companies who I assume must have done countless testing etc to get the product out into the retail world in the first place.

As ever though,i'm more than prepared to be swayed by what advice people have to give on here on the subject.

In case you was thinking I was,I'm not arguing against the advice,just been inquisative as to the pros and cons of these 'cycling' products over buying a bottle of household amonia.