New Fish Tank

[Gytas]

Ok so I got a elite style 60 tank its 60 liter has a filter, lite and a heater which is great

I have a few Q :
1 How many US gallons is it ?
2 How often should i change the water ?
3 What fish would you recomend for it ?


Thanks

 

[Carlovel1]

Ok so I got a elite style 60 tank its 60 liter has a filter, lite and a heater which is great

I have a few Q :
1 How many US gallons is it ?
2 How often should i change the water ?
3 What fish would you recomend for it ?


Thanks

1.15 gallons
2.Around 20% a week
3.Totally your choice of which path you wanna go down (tropical, brackish, community, species only etc.)

 

[Gvilleguy]

Hi Gytas - welcome to the forum! Before you do anything you might want to do a bit of research on this thread page:

Beginner's Resource Center

Particularly the parts about tank cycling to get your aquarium rolling. I avoided a lot of headaches by utilizing it.

 

[waterdrop]

One of the ideal learning sequences is: learn about filters and which media should be in them; learn about the nitrogen cycle and the methods of building a working biofilter prior to fish; begin to learn the art of stocking plans as you are waiting for the biofilter to grow.

The Beginners Resource Center that GVG mentions can help you formulate questions to bounce off the members. In addtion, reading other beginner's threads is fun.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Gytas]

ok thanks for all of your help I m thinking of getting live plants for the tank and my mum thinks that live plants dirty or harm the water and i will need to clean it more often

what would you recomend live or plastick plants?

 

[waterdrop]

I recommend that you think about adding plants around the same time as you add fish, thus giving yourself some weeks or months ahead before you will actually do this.

I imagine what your mother is remembering is a tank she or her family had or some other one she saw where the aquarist was unsuccessful with live plants or was not maintaining them properly. When plants are not doing well or when they are dying, they do indeed add organic debris to the water and the tank. But here on the forum you will have plenty of members to help you have the best chance of success with live aquarium plants and they are much, much more satisfying than plastic ones and can be cared for relatively easily. If you want to have a plastic plant or two in the empty tank while it is cycling to cheer it up, there is nothing wrong with that.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Gytas]

alri thanks

 

[arobinson1984]

Just another point to mention, I'm guessing that the filter that came with the elite 60 is a stingray 15?

If the filter is a stingray then speaking from personal experience I would seriously consider replaing it as they are awful filters, they have a low flow rate and very minimal media surface area for beneficial bacteria to grow.

My first tank was an elite 60 (from pets at home, guessing thats where you got yours?) and the best thing I ever did was to replace the stingray with a fluval 2+ which are fantastic filters. Either the fluval 2+ or the fluval U2 would be ideal for that tank and are both relatively cheap



Andy

 

[Gytas]

ye its a stingray filter im not sure if it is stingray 15 but i remamber that on the box it said that it is for a 75 liter tank
im going to get a testkit today im only cycling the tank I dont have money to spend on new filter im only 14 and the tank and the gravel and the decorations cost my parents 200 euro so i see how this goes and if it is really bad i will get a new 1 but for now it looks really good it moves all of the top of the tank and seems to produse a lot of oxygen


thanks anyway

 

[waterdrop]

Gytas, one of the potential problems with the Stingray filter is that it comes packed with Zeolite, a chemical resin that is so good at removing ammonia that during fishless cycling its possible for it to remove all the ammonia that would be used to grow the bacteria. Zeolite, when used in the proper trailing position in a mature filter, can help remove traces of ammonia that the bacteria have not consumed but in many fishless cycling cases it can be a problem.

Some members on TFF have modified their Stingray filters. If I remember correctly, some of them have replaced the carbon/zeolite mix with a sponge. In fact, it might be that they use a second sponge that is simply one of the standard replacement sponges you can buy for the Stingray, which perhaps means it will be the right size and shape.

Modifying the media can take care of the zeolite problem but doesn't improve the "leak-by" problems that I believe arobinson is referring to. A filter can have good flow (leading to bubbles and surface movement potentially) but still have a problem with water being able to "cheat" and find pathways past the media without getting filtered - this is one of the complaints leveled at the stingray. The reports, however, are mixed and we've had some who have done ok with these filters, so in your case, since replacement is out of the question for now, I'd work on the plan of modifying the media and then getting the fishless cycle going.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Twinklecaz]

I also have the Elite 60 and replaced my filter with the Fluval U2. I don't have a lot to compare it to but it seems to be working fine so far.

 

[Twinklecaz]

P.s There's lots of fish you can have in there. I currently have 3 Platys, 4 Honey Gouramis and 3 Pygmy Corys. Though I am pushing my stocking slightly now so beware of that. Thought out properly though you can get a nice lot of fish.

Just beware though that though it says it's 60L it's actually more like 57L.

 

[Gytas]

thanks for all of your help