New Community Aquarium

[Neil54]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post here, I have posted this elsewhere, but this seems like a very active and helpful forum.

I have a Juwel Rekord 70 aquarium, and have performed a fishless cycle over the last 7 weeks. At the end of last week I could finally add 4ppm of ammonia, and it was reduced to 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite in 12 hours, so after a 30% water change to bring down nitrate, I added 6 Harlequin Rasboras on Monday. They are all doing great, and water stats have not budged from 0 for ammonia and nitrite. Nitrate is currently 5 - 10 ppm.

The rest of my water stats are as follows:

Tap water pH - 7
Current aquarium pH - 6.8
Hardness as CaCO3 - 45ppm
Tap water Nitrate - 5 to 10ppm

The tank has a Tetraplant complete substrate, overlayed with a 3cm layer of fine 1-3mm natural gravel. It is planted with a few Echinodorus "Ozolot", some Hygrophila Polysperma, 1 Jave fern tied to wood, and 1 Echinodorus "Harbii". I am not using CO2, but all plants have shown excellent growth during cycling procedure. I also have a couple of bits of bogwood, and a small slate cave i built. The measured volume of the tank when filling was dead on 60 litres.

My main question is about the way to procede with stocking the tank. I was thinking of adding 6 Neon or Cardinal Tetras in a few weeks time, and then in a couple of months, a pair of blue Rams. However, I am now unsure, as i have heard that these Tetras are not that hardy and i would need to mature the aquarium for several months before adding them. Also, someone at my LFS told me that my water was too soft for rams, and the aquarium would be too small as well. If I did stock with fish of the same approximate sizes and numbers as above, would I be fully stocked?

I am new to fish keeping, and this is my first aquarium, so any advice or suggestions on stocking would be very much appreciated. Sorry for the long post though.

Thanks in advance,
Neil.

 

[rabbut]

I see no issues with the stocking you propose The softer the better for rams realy, so the tank is fine. They will need it to mature for arround 6 months first though. The cardinals IMO are fine to add already, as IME they are quite hardy. I added them as my first fish after cycling my 74gal, and they all survived with no issues, and had correctly coloured up within munuties of being released.

HTH
Rabbut

 

[Neil54]

Hi,

Thanks for the quick response. It's good to have some reassurance, as from what i had read, rams prefered soft water, so was a bit confused by what I was told!

 

[The Mighty Boosh]

Also, once your fishless cycle is complete you can pretty much fully stock your tank as the beneficial bacteria has reached a peak level for your tank

If you only put a few fish in there, they will produce less waste(ammonia) than you were adding during the cycle, so your colony will reduce in size to match the amount of 'food' that they are being supplied with.

then when you add more fish it will need to build up again to cope with the added bioload

 

[iankent]

after cycling I fully stocked and have had no problems with the water at all - ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and ph all remaining pretty constant - it's 110L with 12 neons, 10 glowlights, 6 corys, 2 african dwarf frogs and 1 siamese fighter!

edit: as the mighty boosh says, if you dont fully stock then your bacteria will reduce, and you might have a mini-cycle later on!

 

[Neil54]

Hi,

Thanks for the info guys, I suppose it makes sense about the bacteria population size vs. nutrient availability, as 6 Rasboras are definitly not going to produce 4ppm of amonia in 12 hours! I guess I should have thought about that more, being a microbiology student!