My First Tank

the plants'll have only been submerged maybe a week at max. LFS are notoriously untrustworthy/unknowledgeable when it comes to somethings. Some lfs will sell anything to you if it'll make them money. Have a read of the pinned topics in the planted tank forum. Well worth it.

14gtr14 said:

the plants'll have only been submerged maybe a week at max. LFS are notoriously untrustworthy/unknowledgeable when it comes to somethings. Some lfs will sell anything to you if it'll make them money. Have a read of the pinned topics in the planted tank forum. Well worth it.

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Thanks for that, I will have a read.

The man in my LFS is realy nice and dosn't try to flog me anything he can, he gives good advice and always sells me what he thinks is best which is mostly the cheapest or nearest to cheapest item im looking for. I wish they where all like him (NOT HAPPENIN) lol.

The cycle on my tank is coming to an end. The last few readings are as follows . . .

2nd Feb :
4th Feb:
6th Feb:

Hopefully the cycle will be finished tomorrow!!! I've been looking into options I have for extra fish to add to the mix and it seems I only have room for one more white cloud minnow and I'm done!? This can't be right!!!?

I was hoping to get some cories and a few more minnow's at least, but using the 1inch of fish for each US gallon of water, after one more minnow I'm fully stocked up! Is this correct?

2 x Platies : 6 inches
2x Mollies : 6 inches
2x white cloud mountain minnows : 4 inches

70 litre aquarium = 18 US gallons

6 + 6 + 4 = 16 inches

18 - 16 = 2 inches of fish remaining

Please could somebody clarify this for me??

Thanks

EDITED TO ADD AN IMAGE

The green and white plants you have definately arent tropical aquatic plants, they are a semi aquatic plant, that will rot. Its common for shops to have them though along with a red/green version (also not aquatic)

Yes the general rule of thumb is exactly how you stated it. Basically what it comes down to is waste produced by the fish against the water volume and filtration provided. If you had started your tank properly with a fishless cycle you wouldnt have had to put in fish like Platys and Mollies in as you did this would have meant you could have added different (smaller) fish.

Eg

10 Neons, 5 Cory/Oto's, Shrimp etc...

DarkEntity said:

Yip thats about the sum of it, thats the general rule of thumb for stocking fish.

Also the green and white plants you have definately arent tropical aquatic plants, they are a semi aquatic plant, that will rot. Its common for shops to have them though along with a red/green version (also not aquatic)

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Thanks for the response. As this is my first tank, I didn't know very much when I purchased it. I am rather disappointed that I will have a total of 7 fish in this tank I was hoping for double that!

Looks like I'm going to have to get saving for another one then. Can't believe I was cycling the tank and I was near to my maximum fish load.

As for the plants, you should be able to see from the image I added to the last post that I have added a 'fountain plant' (3 or 4 of them actually to the centre of the tank) and some amazon sword. I'm going to remove the original two plants shortly a move things around. Thanks for clarifying the non-aquaticness (strange word) or the plant.