Glad I Found This Spot

[LivePsalm91]

My name is Wanda. I am a daughter, child of God, wife, mother of three sons, grandmother of two girls and two boys. I am a disabled veteran of the Army after 22 years where we spent 16 years in Germany and the rest at Fort Campbell, KY. I retired from the Army in 1997 and I worked around the U.S. until 2004. My husband and I live in middle Tennessee where we look forward to fishing and los of travel. I decided to join a forum this evening, after our 50 gallon tank was set up by a local company. I know the tank is going to look great and I am going to learn as much as I can, while the tank professes.

In past years, I took care of as many as seven tanks in our home for 25 years. When I was hospitalized in 2004, I was taking care of seven tanks all over our two story Cape Cod. After a two year hospitalization and rehab, I couldn't take care of the shrinking number of tanks while in my power chair and couldn't make it to the tanks upstairs. So we are down to the one 50 gallon tank, I enjoy it very much, and my husband doesn't have time to keep it the way it should be kept. So I am paying someone to keep the beauty of a tank in our home.

My first order of business is to get the best fish and the right quantities in our tank. Any help you can give me with selection will be very much appreciated. I have a couple of weeks to search and I am sure I'll get it right with your help. What are the most colorful, compatible freshwater fish for a 50 gallon tank?

 

[Ch4rlie]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

Sounds as if you've had some real nice tanks in the past.

Good idea to get someone to do the hard work on your new 50 gal tank while you will enjoy watching the tank progress and grow to be a nice lush tank and of course with some real nice fish of your choosing.

A 50 gal tank is a nice size so you'll have lots of options.

The first thing we will need to know before choosing suitable stocking, is to know what kind of water you have.

If you can find out if you have soft or hard water, namely ph, gH and kH. All of those will tell us what species of fish will thrive.

Soft water fish such as many species of Tetra and Coryadoras will not fare well in hard water and of course hard water fish such as rainbowfish will do poorly in soft water.

You can get water testing kits to provide this information, or you can take sample of your tap water to LFS and they can test the water for you (some are free, some may charge a small fee for the tests) and be sure to get exact numbers from LFS as sometimes they are very vague. And last source of getting this info would be searching online for your local water authority website and that should have lots of information on the quality of your local water as well as water hardness average readings.

So a few options there on how to get to get this information and then simply post the results / reading on here then we can help further what species will be happier in your water parameters.

Oh, and one last thing, it's probably obvious to you since you've had many tanks, be sure to cycle the tank and filter before adding live fish. Fishless Cycle.

 

[LyraGuppi]

Welcome! Ch4rlie gave some very good information up there.

 

[thrujenseyes]

Welcome and thank you for your service!
Ch4rlie gave the best advice so I look forward to your response and you getting this project started!
It will bring you so much joy!