Going Tropcial

[haowin]

So had a failed attempt at starting a SW tank so going for a less demanding tropical tank (i hope)

ive read about the golden ratio and want to try out creating a scape (nothing extreme, just a bit of eye candy, hehe)

The tank look im going for is something like http/www.ratemyfishtank.com/images/thumbimg/400/7857_7.jpg
but with more background plants around the back (maybe a slate cave as the center piece, or bog wood) with a variation of plant heights to really draw the eye to the certain point.
A thing im seeing is with things like this theres not alot of fish in them? im not sure if the people making them thought the fish where ruining the tank or something? or if theres a genuine problem behind it
I would have thought it would be a perfect combo, both contributing to each others needs, as in oxygen and co2.


My tanks Juwel panaorama 100 : 170L, 37 imperial G, 44 us G
I have a internal filter, not sure which bio flow it is, not sure what head its got but it came with it.
Ive got the equipment
bought an bio external filter. 1000/lph.
200w heater
2x45w lights

currently tho, ive a coldwater system, 2 fantail goldfish, 4 cloud minnows. figured i'd give the goldfish to a lfs and raise the temp of the tank.

With the swap of the filters, any ideas?
I thought of running them both along side each other. is it possible to extract the bacteria from the internal filter and transfer it to the new filter? im thinking of a blunt squeeze of the sponges into the new filter?


I had a list of fish i made up before thinking about plants so im not sure about their compatibility.


.

Ph.............Temp(degree celsius)

red wag sword -​

Adaptable.............Adaptable

Red Snakeskin Guppy -​

6.5-8............. 18-25

Hi-fin Rainbow Platy -​

6.5-8............. 21-25

Rummynose Tetra -​

5.5-7............. 22-27

Chequer Barb -​

6.5-7.5............. 18-23

Blue Shrimp -​

6-7.5............. 22-25

Snail zebra -​

6.5-7.5............. 22-28​

Some plecs aswell, heard about problems with snails taking over the tank or something. so jibbed the snails.
Wanted some cichlids, read recommended to keep them in a minimum group of 4 and at £10 a pop, ne1 know if they're worth it? the frontosa ones would look awesome under moonlighting but still, £40 minimum lol
Will research more into them individually once ive gotten a clear idea of what to go for but some of the fish can only have 1 male or something?

Was gonna use
Java Fern for general front viewing and Vallisneria spiralis as the background
or getting a multipack of plants and just playing around with what i get.

Any views would be great.

 

[JoshuaA]

I hear this can be great for fish compatibility http/www.aqadvisor.com/

However you always get people who say their personal experiences were different. I also feel like sometimes you can go way over what would be an acceptable stocking level with that advisor.

 

[haowin]

cheers for that, took me a while, but ended up resorting to the dwarf section

So thats what i got, the 'filtration capacity' is 216%, that turnover rate or something?


the dimensions arent right but the gallons about right
ended up giving myself 20% free space, incase i find another species or something, and for used up volume substrate.decor n that.

with ordering online(thought i'll probably go to lfs) i dont want an excessive production of shrimp, i dont think they're hermaphroditic so if i can 2 females or something im good? plus with the ghost i rekon they'd look pretty #40## good under moonlighting

can u have a heavily planted aquarium with those fish? no problems?
also is it possible to not have a additoinal co2 supply? can my fish produce enough to support the plants? and for plants vis versa?

thanks

 

[JoshuaA]

Most of those are answers for more experienced fish keepers, however the filtration bit.

Basically your requirement is 100% if you have completed your fish selection and you have 216% filtration then you are doing more than twice the required amount of filtration. These values really are "give or take". Also the dimension calculator doesn't take into account the fact your glass actually is 3d and therefore is a bit over generous on the volume, if you want the true volume you need to measure it inside so it is always best to leave some free space so you can expand the community later and also compensate for any ornaments/plants/internal equipment that take up room.

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Haowin and Welcome to TFF!

Reading over your goals and fish and equipment descriptions (a lot of which look great by the way (!)) I'm struck that you have set out on a path we see a lot here in our beginners section: you are already off and running on the area we call "stocking lists" with barely a mention of the underlying fishkeeping skills that need to preceed this effort, except perhaps that you've discussed filters as if they were simply something you buy, turn on, and plug a flow rate number into a stocking advisor!

Now if you're an advanced aquarist, things can perhaps proceed that way, but here in the beginners section (and me being somewhat the default "boring water guy," lol) we like to make good and sure that each beginner has at least had exposure to a bit more fundamental understanding what makes a good environment "tick" (for freshwater tropical fish, anyway!)

Filters have three major functions: mechanical filtration, biological filtration and chemical filtration. The first one, mechanical, is the one that most people are familiar with, the trapping of debris particles to get them out of the tank and to deal with their breakdown. Mechanical media divides up into coarse, medium and fine trapping as you might imagine. Chemical filtration is the optional one of the three, you only put it in your filter when you have a specific need for it: carbon is the most common chemical media and its only needed to remove medications or yellow tannins from wood or for a few other purposes. The industry likes to try and sell us carbon and tell us to use it all the time, as a money maker for them to some extent. Biological filtration is really the core magic of the hobby that's been doing its special thing for decades and is the one that fascinates us if we're curious.

The story of biological filtration goes thus: When fish respire (move water through their gills) they give off quite a bit of ammonia (NH3) as well as CO2. (Since they have plenty of water and no need to preserve it like land animals, they have not developed complicated water filter systems involving kidneys and bladders, like us for instance.) Fish waste, excess fishfood in the tank and plant debris from living plants are all composed of organic molecules and are broken down in the tank water by heterotrophic bacteria the turn it in to... ammonia! Ammonia, even in tiny quantities, is a serious poison to fish. It causes permanent gill damage, leading to shortened lives or death. In nature, ammonia is carried from the gills by thousands of gallons of fresh water. In our tanks the situation is not nearly so good.

Unbeknownst to the earliest aquarists who set up filters for mechanical filtration, mother nature was helping them out in the form of a specific species type of bacteria that would grow inside their filters. These bacteria are "autotrophic" (eaters of rock! technically.. chemolithoautotrophic!) which "eat" (actually they process it across their surfaces).. Ammonia! They can take 1ppm of ammonia and turn it in to 2.7ppm of nitrite(NO2), a completely different substance. This removes ammonia from our aquariums, making the water healthy for fish gills.

Unfortunately, nitrite(NO2) is ALSO a deadly poison for our fish! It behaves chemically a lot like oxygen and is able to attach to hemoglobin protein surfaces on fish red blood cells. Since this displaces oxygen, it begins to suffocate the fish. Actually, its worse! The NO2 causes a chemical breakdown in the red blood cells, essentially destroying them, leaving organic molecules that look brown in color rather than red. But mother nature comes to the rescue again in the form of a second autotrophic bacteria which is beneficial to us. This one lives right in there with the ammonia eaters and eats nitrite(NO2), turning it into nitrate(NO3), yet a different nitrogen carrying substance.

Nitrate(NO3) is not nearly so dangerous to our fish (many can stand 100ppm of it and not be bothered, although some can't) and can be removed via a good habit called the weekly gravel-clean-water-change, which is a part of every good aquarists maintenance skills.

In order for our two beneficial bacteria species (we'll call them the A-Bacs and the N-Bacs for short (actually they are Nitrosomonas spp. and Nitrospira spp.).. for ammonia oxidizers and nitrite oxidizers) to work well in a filter, it needs to be designed well. The filter box needs to slow down the water flow, allowing it to come in contact with the bacteria and their "biofilm" materials that they ooze and for organic particals to be trapped and broken down into ammonia and yet still make it through the media and be pumped out, creating a significant circulation in the fish tank. Surprisingly, for beginners, aquarists often take a rather "custom" approach to knowing their media in the filter, sometimes trying different variations of it.

OK, so all this "stuff" is going on but the water still just looks like "water" to you as you stand over the tank, right? As I'm sure you know, you need a water test kit to really know anything important. And it turns out it can't just be any old test method. The practical thing most of us do is use a liquid-reagent based test kit (perhaps you have one?) with little test tubes and bottles. Most of us like and use the API Freshwater Master Test Kit or the Nutrfin one or the advanced Salifert tests. The members can help you with this if necessary.

Another major thing we beginners worry about is whether our filters are "cycled," which is the simple word we use to describe whether all this complicated bacteria stuff is working correctly in our filters. It usually takes at least two months before a filter has this all built up and working correctly and it can go out of whack somewhat easily too, so we learn to check on it and generally know how its doing. Part of the wisdom of our beginner section is knowing how to really know all about these biological filters!

Creating good "stocking lists" of fish is really a skill that best comes -on top- of having a good feel for the underlying balance and filtration of a given tank system. When a beginner fully stocks or "overstocks" a tank, the very often run into major problems. This often leads to fish deaths and frustration and a lack of confidence in the hobby. A much better way to learn the hobby is to be helped to have a very reasonable stocking for the first year or year and a half, so that one gains a fun and successful baseline experience in the hobby. From there, one can choose to branch out and still have insight into how things should really go when all is right.

Good luck and I hope to see you around!
~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

Stocking lists are not a subject that any reasonable sized database can handle. I write databases as a part of my job and know a bit about what goes into creating one. No database can ever take the place of human judgment. What a database creator does is take the information that they have and try to write rules that the database can use to get the same results that an educated person would get for compatibility. Unfortunately, with thousands of possible combinations, there is no way to make the database spot the incompatibilities on anything but the most basic level. Such things as pH tolerance, temperature tolerance and size are factors that a database can handle well. Things like the propensity of Ameca splendens to specifically strip the fins off a cory are not things easy to place into a rule listing for a database to work with. Ameca splendens are relatively small to intermediate in size, are not generally aggressive, are primarily vegetarian in nature and should be expected to work well with many species in a community situation. What none of that generic information does is take into account the tendency of Amecas to specifically target corydoras and similar fish as worthy of an attack. Please stay away from the generic database locations that say they can predict fish interactions. They are simply not able to do so, although I would not be surprised to find that particular site giving warnings about my example by next week. Yhbae is nothing if not aggressive in his pursuit of simple rules and I have just stated one. Unfortunately, I have only stated a specific prohibition on mixing fish, not some all inclusive principle. Interactions of both Amecas and cories will still miss most other relationship problems.
These databases have another weak spot. Because a database writer cannot be expected to be expert in the ins and outs of everything, they often accept "accepted wisdom" such as the commonly stated "fact" that a filter increase can allow a fish population increase in a tank. It is total rubbish, but is widely accepted outside this forum and a very few others. Where does that leave the poor newbie who is using such a database? It leaves them thinking that the only restraint to increasing their fish population is the need to buy a bigger filter. OK so what is wrong with that? What is wrong is that they buy the bigger filter and come back on here two months later asking why all their fish are dying. They will then say that they are overfiltered enough to support their current stock levels, they see no aggression in the tank and fish just keep dying. When they ask me or WD or a few others about their problem they get the advice to go to a lower stocking level and that no filter can allow a higher stock level than the tank maintenance practices support. The practical consequence is simple. "Common knowledge" that can be found in dozens of fish forums or on wiki sites is often wrong. It is often nothing more than people repeating what they have read elsewhere. Unfortunately, checking with a Google search will do nothing but confirm that bad advice. Google and other similar search methods do nothing to confirm the accuracy of the threads that they find. It takes real thought and real understanding to come to correct conclusions about many subjects. The results are often not popular and are not frequently repeated where a search will find them.

 

[haowin]

epic replies, thanks
My tanks cycled(to my knowledge, 0 - ammon/Ni, i've had a coldwater system running for nearly a year or so. i've bought a new external filter as part of upgrading my tank, ive ran the matured internal filter along side the external to remove the risk of allowing ammonia/nitrite build up as the new medias maturing.
Lol really? so you only need to use it after medicating fish, so they dont get overdosed up on the stuff? and when u get some bog/drift w/e wood in there?

Hey oldman, erm im not sure as to whether your reply was directed at the fish list or for using the database thing. The ameca spldens you were talkin about, i dont think they're on the list, but im not sure if they've got an alias or something, or you were just using that example as a fault in using databases. Yea i can see that the database wouldnt be 100% so ive kinda just used it as a guide. Basically choosing small sized fish (pygmys) in the varieties i'd like to keep.
Goin over the fish in my list, by your judgement, would you say its an ok list?
(btw u should probably post that post somewhere just so people are aware)

Going by the database as a guide, ive left myself 20% tank capacity as a safety. Im not sure whether the 200% filtration is acceptable or not.

 

[OldMan47]

Ameca splendens go by the common name of butterfly goodeid, Haowin. The male has a nice orange looking edge to its tail that reminds some people of a butterfly wing. As is the case of many goodeids, Amecas do not make ideal tank mates for a typical community and are a bit too rough specifically with cories. I love mine but keep them in a single species tank. They are very gentle with their own species and their own fry. Unlike so many common livebearers, they are not a threat to their fry and their fry have a very high survival rate. They are also excellent algae eaters but are glad to take flake foods or frozen foods as an addition to their diets.

3 Ameca juveniles

The hardest part about keeping most goodeids is finding them. I have never seen any in local fish shops. Instead they are readily available through many fish clubs. The simple, easy care, Amecas that I described above are extinct in the wild because of habitat destruction but are easy to find in the hobby because they are so easy to care for. In general goodeids are as easy to care for and as prolific as guppies if you give them a tank of their own.