My Aquarium Arrived!

a Juwel rio 240L

18" high so i can have angels!!

Hell yeah!!!


I had the fright of my life when i saw a 3-4 inch black line across the glass, to find after many phonecalls of panick that it was just very thin silicone LOL.

nice size for a first tank

can i make a suggestion re the angels, while yes the tank is fine for them, have a look for some proper scalare with natural markings. They will be stronger than the fancy varieties with funny colourings and personally speaking I think they are much more attractice.

what's your planned stocking list then?

just for fun here's what I'd do with the tank

4 angels
10 congo tetras
15 cardinal tetras
10 sterbai cories
handful of ottos and chain loaches

(note that's a relativley heavy stocking and would need a decent filter and to be built up slowly)

I will try my best to find one, all the LFS around me (seriously kent sucks lol) arent that good....Ive been to 4 so far and when i was talking about stuff i heard here they were all really concerned about me killing fish with bottles of ammonia and stuff LOL.

I have no idea what to stock, im definitely getting many assortments of tetras, guppies too, endlers (il make sure no hybrid breeding occurs with all male tank or special breeding tanks or something)

I have to be careful though as when angels get big they can eat small tetras cant they?

I heard they eat neons...in which case il get its bigger cousin the cardinal tetra and see how things go LOL.

Worst comes to the worst i'll put them in the 2nd tank im getting in a couple of days time which is a 3fter, 120 litres i think, it is 18" high too from my knowledge, il stick the angels in there if they get too bully-ish


I wish i had a 400L tank so i could keep bala sharks, but oh well.

I want to get some gouramis too.

the angels can eat cardinals too, neon's are their natural food source, cardinals aren't significantly bigger, a fully grown angel may also have a snack on a guppy or endler.

you need to stick to bigger small fish (like 2") to have them in with angels tbh, a hungry angel will have a pop at any small fish, don't let the name fool you, they can be aggressive when they want to.

haha yeah, i probably wont get angels in the end then, i love neons/cardinals, blue and red together are brilliant colours.

Ive got the money for another 240L, hell i could manage a 400L, then i can mix balas and angels together?


Is it totally tragic that im a builder, and im staring at the cabinet building instructions like its a russian nuke instruction manual....

Its too early for this kind of stuff lol.

twistedlink said:

haha yeah, i probably wont get angels in the end then, i love neons/cardinals, blue and red together are brilliant colours.

Ive got the money for another 240L, hell i could manage a 400L, then i can mix balas and angels together?


Is it totally tragic that im a builder, and im staring at the cabinet building instructions like its a russian nuke instruction manual....

Its too early for this kind of stuff lol.

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ummm balas and angels could possibly work, not 100% sure on that compatibility but nothing obvious springs to mind, only thing is that bala's are easily spooked and can go darting round the tank, not sure how happy the angels would be with such big fish crashing around everywhere.

personal opinion is that angels like to be the daddy of the tank, so need to be with other medium sized fish, nothing too tiny or it'll be eaten, nothing much bigger than the angels.

lmao

what sort of builder are you?

So the main things to mix with angels would be gouramis, catfish, non territorial large cichlids etc.

As soon as i saw balas i wanted them, but the minimum is a 75G tank, and quite honestly if i were to get them id do my best to get the biggest tank a 400L is nearly 90 Gallons so id go for one of those.

For this tank I'll probably start off it as a massive community tank, with loads of little shoalers, that will hopefully work well, and itl be nice for them to have a giant tank to explore

I worked out i can have a good 150cm of fish (without tails).

Ive taken figures from here, and figures from main books i feel are good, and averaged them all out.

150cm is 59 inches, mine is a 53 gallon tank, so im 6 inches over what the general rule is, but i doubt il get 150cm of fish anyway.

Im a plasterer/cover/dry liner.

Thing is when measuring board and cove ive done weird angles and fittings before, so usually im used to measurements etc, but instruction manuals draw them so damn stupidly, with pictures too small (and ive left my glasses at my fiancees damn it LOL)

twistedlink said:

So the main things to mix with angels would be gouramis, catfish, non territorial large cichlids etc.

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sooalers are fine with angels too, just not the really small shoalers, so you can put the bigger tetras, rainbowfish etc with them, likewise with livebearers all but the smallest are fine, platys, mollies etc. Dwarf cichlids can be a good match too, like our nannacara or apistogramma

[qoute]
As soon as i saw balas i wanted them, but the minimum is a 75G tank, and quite honestly if i were to get them id do my best to get the biggest tank a 400L is nearly 90 Gallons so id go for one of those.[/qoute]

not kept bala's myself so i can't give much advice regarding them, only thing I know for sure is that they have a tendancy to be skittish, skittish fish when scared will charge around the tank in a flurry, the more space they have the better in that situation so i would always advise to go for a larger tank if possible.

For this tank I'll probably start off it as a massive community tank, with loads of little shoalers, that will hopefully work well, and itl be nice for them to have a giant tank to explore

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yeah definatley, we've a similar sized (220l) with a mixture of shoaling fish with a couple of nannacara anomala thrown in as feature fish, we think it works brilliantly and it look good, just need to get the planting off the ground then we'll be happy with it

I worked out i can have a good 150cm of fish (without tails).

Ive taken figures from here, and figures from main books i feel are good, and averaged them all out.

150cm is 59 inches, mine is a 53 gallon tank, so im 6 inches over what the general rule is, but i doubt il get 150cm of fish anyway.

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sounds absolutley fine, 1" of fish per gallon is a guideline not a rule. It's good to stick to it when starting out but when you've a bit more knowledge and experience you'll pick up where you can bend the rules and where you can't.

Im a plasterer/cover/dry liner.

Thing is when measuring board and cove ive done weird angles and fittings before, so usually im used to measurements etc, but instruction manuals draw them so damn stupidly, with pictures too small (and ive left my glasses at my fiancees damn it LOL)

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cool, my other half is a ceiling fixer, does a bit of dry lining from time to time too although it's usually just a small section for a bulk head or something like that. I'm in the construction industry too although less directly. I work for a big engineering consultancy, I look after the quality management system (ISO 9001 accreditation if that means anything to you)

plastering is a dark art though, thats about the only job Ian will accept that we need to get tradesmen in to do cos he just can't do it. He can patch but not proper areas. As his dad always say's though 'I can't plaster but i can sand lovely' so Ian can get by on most of what we need doing!

I do know exactly what you mean about struggling, when you're used to working from precise good drawings in a work environment and with all the best tools to hand then go from that to just making do with a dodgy instruction booklet you feel a bit lost!! Ian's like that with cooking, he trained as a chef and he can make brilliant food, but only if he goes shopping first gets all the ingredients, uses every pan in the kitchen and takes 3 hrs, no good at just putting something on the table

Nice tank. What are your stocking.?