Quanity Of Fish

[drufly]

Hi im fairly new to the fish keeping game. Could any1 recommend how many fish to put in a hexa60 tank(about 90ltrs) i quite fancy a community

 

[5teady_2012]

If your going for smaller community fish i would put 15 in it and maybe a couple bottom dwellers

Is your tank cycled?

How did you cycle it?

 

[drufly]

If your going for smaller community fish i would put 15 in it and maybe a couple bottom dwellers

Is your tank cycled?

How did you cycle it?

not sure about the cycling, i was told when i bought the tank to let the water stay in with the pump on for a week. that is all i done. i have a few fish in, a red tail shark, siamese fighter, 6 neons and 4 femon tetras

 

[AngelOfDeath]

If your going for smaller community fish i would put 15 in it and maybe a couple bottom dwellers

Is your tank cycled?

How did you cycle it?

not sure about the cycling, i was told when i bought the tank to let the water stay in with the pump on for a week. that is all i done. i have a few fish in, a red tail shark, siamese fighter, 6 neons and 4 femon tetras

yeah for somer reason they told me a week when i went to buy my tank, but i chose to cycle it

seen as you already have fish in, you should perform consistent water changes etc as there is no bio filtration

 

[drufly]

wot sort of bio filtration would be suitable, not much room for much else as the filter is cased in the top under the lid

 

[5teady_2012]

If your going for smaller community fish i would put 15 in it and maybe a couple bottom dwellers

Is your tank cycled?

How did you cycle it?

not sure about the cycling, i was told when i bought the tank to let the water stay in with the pump on for a week. that is all i done. i have a few fish in, a red tail shark, siamese fighter, 6 neons and 4 femon tetras

Typical of a fish store to not tell you about cycling, seems a lot of them seem to think leaving the tank stood for a week is ok but it aint, a tank needs to be cycled (the nitrogen cycle) to build up good bacteria in your filter.

If you have fish in there though its irrelivant now, but if you ever set up another tank, be sure to read the cycle section

 

[drufly]

Will do cheers

 

[Osian]

I'm no expert, really just started so someone could correct me on this, but wont the red tailed shark harras or attack the other fish in the tank? Like the siamese fighting fish?

 

[CFC]

I presume from the name Hexa60 that this is a hexagonal tank? If so what is the dimensions, red tailed sharks grow to about 6 inches and need a tank that is at least 30 inches in length. Hexagonal tanks are pretty useless for anything but a handful of very small fish as they offer no lateral swimming space or room for territories.

Do you actually understand what "cycle" means?

In order to support life your filter needs to grow a colony of bacteria which feed on the highly toxic Ammonia produced by the fishes wastes, these bacteria convert the Ammonia to another compound called Nitrite which is also toxic to fish, but another species of bacteria feed on the Nitrite and convert it to another compound called Nitrate which is non toxic in low levels and is diluted by doing regular water changes.

In order to start the process of the "cycle" you need to add an Ammonia source, it takes several weeks for the cycle to be complete and during this time any fish in the aquarium will be exposed to deadly levels of Ammonia and Nitrite, you can dilute the toxins with daily water changes but most fish will not survive the cycling process and will die.
In the old days people would buy 2 or 3 small cheap tough fish and use them to cycle the tank before buying any other fish but these days it is more common to artificially cycle a tank by adding pure ammonia to an empty tank and then monitoring the Ammonia and Nitrite levels with a test kit, once all the levels have dropped back to zero fish can safely be added.

There is lots of information about the nitrogen cycle and fish less cycling on the forum and i would strongly suggest reading it.

 

[drufly]

When i said i was new to the game i have had the tank about 3 to 4 months. everything in the tank seems to be doin alrite with only 2 rams lost. My water was tested not long ago and every thing came out clear

the shark i have is friendly enough, there is the odd fight between the shark and the fighter but both seem to leave each other alone most of the time

 

[OldMan47]

For the size of your tank, I would leave well enough alone with the stocking. Right now it is a little on the light side which means that if you miss a water change by a day or 2 it will not cause serious problems but be a bit forgiving. If you start stocking up to the maximum, the first bobble in tank maintenance will be the end of some of your fish. You say that you had the water checked recently but I would advise that you get a water testing kit with all the liquid testing reagents. That way if there is anything not quite right, you can quickly test the water and look to places like this with your readings in hand to get advice. Without the actual numbers, most of us are just guessing what problems might be.