My First Tank

[Jack Dixon]

So I'm now 7 days in and have added my first fish today along with a few Amano shrimp. The plants are growing great and everyone seems to be settling in. Can't stop watching the Amano, they're facinating! Got 10 glow lights and 5 Amano

[TropicalFishForums]

[Siege]

Have you cycled it with ammonia jack?

Ps. I just looked at your other post to remind me.

Have you tested for ammonia because your Tmc nutragrow soil will release ammonia for a few weeks.

If you tank has only been set up a week or so, you are super early to introduce fish and shrimp.

Test your ammonia to see.

You'll be doing a fish in cycle so massive water changes will be needed if you have any sign of ammonia and or nitrite.

Also have you got any seachem prime. This will help to detoxify the ammonia for the fish in an emergency.

[Jack Dixon]

All the test results came back ok but everyone I spoke to said to only wait a week. Wharf aquatics actually told me not to even bother testing until I put fish in for what it's worth. I started the tank with Fluval cycle if that helps?

[Jack Dixon]

Just panic tested now after your comment as I wouldn't sleep with it on my mind. Ammonia is 0 and nitrite is just below 0.05 so seems ok. I'll stick with my planned twice weekly changes for the next fortnight and keep an eye on it.

[plankton]

You may get away with it if you has the "soil" releasing ammonia for a week.
Keep your eye on the parameters and the Amanos.

[Jack Dixon]

Well the tank is doing fantastic, everyone seems really happy, eating well and behaving normal. Weekly water tests show nothing outside of perfect conditions. Stocking is now finished and is as follows: 10 Glowlight Tetra, 7 Snakeskin Barb, 2 Zebra/Candy Loach, 9 Amano Shrimp, 2 Electric Blue Ram and 1 BN Plec. It's a really nice mix but the loaches have won me over, such a funny fish to watch. The rams were my wife's choice as she wanted to pick some fish for the tank but she was misadvised by a LFS and the 2 don't appear to get on, since found out that's about the norm.

The upside to this is that it's resulted in getting another tank to split up the rams and get some other species. The tank is currently cycling but water and filter media from the current tank should speed this up. Stocking isn't decided yet but will most likely be a shoal of Tetra, a fancy Plec (this tank won't be heavily planted so can be more adventurous) and something else after research but Otto's or Cory's are in the running.

[plankton]

Looks very rocky

[Si4geckos]

Any updated pics of the first tank?

Would love to see plant progress. You seem to have been more adventurous with me with planting your first tank haha. Have you got any CO2 or just a low tech set up?

Glad to hear everything is going well. Look forward to some piccies

[Jack Dixon]

I'll try and get some tonight when the glare is gone so you don't just get a picture of me lol. I'm injecting CO2 at around 1-2 bubbles per second, I had struggled with plants melting and algae as I'd not been adding enough. I've just upgraded to a co2 supermarket kit with a solenoid valve on a timer for more reliable injection. It's been a bit of a learning curve but I've found lots of useful info online that's helped a lot. Youtube was the best source for how to guides etc for plant preparation, planting etc. One platform I've never used before which was very helpful was Instagram as it put me in touch with people with the sorts of look I wanted. Sound Aquascaping advice is something that a lot of LFS's seems to be lacking and it's probably harder than actually keeping the fish it seems.

[MattHunt]

Both tanks look nice.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[Jack Dixon]

As promised, here's some updated pics and one of the the new 100L after I'd given in and planted it. The 100L is low tech so no CO2, planted mainly from cuttings out of the 200L and the background plants being what I split out of one P@H Tropica pot.

[Jack Dixon]

Side by side

[Outliar]

Nice looking tank, and some lovely fish in there too.

I love the Amano shrimps too: they're hilarious to watch.  I find they love to re-arrange all my AquaSoil and put it places where it shouldn't be.  They swim around frantically, and bump into my WCM minnows in the mornings and evenings...

Out of interest, do you have a circulation pump creating flow at the bottom?  I'm just curious about other people's experience of playing with flow rates at the bottom of the tank.  I keep moving my circulation pump, and experimenting to see what the fish like and how much flow seems to suit the plants...

[plankton]

Very nice Jack. Very different layouts, but both interesting.
The neons would really stand out with a black backing.

[Jack Dixon]

Nice looking tank, and some lovely fish in there too.

I love the Amano shrimps too: they're hilarious to watch.  I find they love to re-arrange all my AquaSoil and put it places where it shouldn't be.  They swim around frantically, and bump into my WCM minnows in the mornings and evenings...

Out of interest, do you have a circulation pump creating flow at the bottom?  I'm just curious about other people's experience of playing with flow rates at the bottom of the tank.  I keep moving my circulation pump, and experimenting to see what the fish like and how much flow seems to suit the plants...

I've not played around too much with the flow, the U4 lets you set it top, bottom or spray bar but I've just kept it at the top for aeration purposes. The Amano shrimp are fascinating to watch but the most comical fish in there are the Botia Striata (Candy Loach), they're such characters and always busy. It's funny because I didn't really want them and knew nothing about them but I'd got a snail problem and one of our many LFS highly recommended them as snail eaters. Within 24-36 hours I'd not got a single snail and they'd really coloured up into 2 beautiful fish. The Snakeskin Barbs are lovely fish as well, I wanted some barbs but a lot had undesirable traits, it seems snakeskins are a fish rarity because they're one of the easier keepers in their family but are also one of the most attractive. A lot of fish I looked into involved a trade off, negative traits for pretty fish lol.

I think I'm at my stocking limit now in the 200L by the time the fish grow. Still working on the wife for another tank as I've enjoyed aquascaping almost as much as the fish keeping but she's not keen on discus which is what I'd like really. I've got ideas in my head for a high tech 400L with some discus, cardinals and some Otto's.