What's the best combination?

Essjay said:

There are about half a dozen diiferent units of measurement for GH (hardness) but fish keeping uses just two.
You 2.03 clark converts to 1.6 dH and 29 ppm. Make a note of those as fish profiles will use one unit or the other. You have very soft water.

That 12.5 avaerage 'alkalinity as CaCO3' is the same as 12.5 ppm KH and 0.7 dKH. I suspected your KH would be low since you have very soft water. This means you are at risk of a pH drop during cycling so definitely test pH when you test for ammonia & nitrite.

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Essjay said:

That 1.6dH and 29 ppm are the same hardness, just in different units like inches and cm for measuring the length of a fish tank. Seriously Fish is the best website for fish research, their profiles for each fish species gives the hardness range in the water they come from. Some profiles give hardness in ppm, some give it in dH. You need to find fish which have your hardness in the range the fish profile gives.

For example, neon tetras have been mentioned - their hardness range is 18 to 215 ppm, and your 29 ppm is within that range so neon tetras suit your water.
Guppies were also mentioned. Their hardness range is 143 to 536 ppm and your hardness is well below that so no guppies.

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Byron said:

You mention neon and cardinal tetras in post 1, and this raises an important point to keep in mind. Some fish are fine with just one, or a few. But many of the fish we keep are what we term shoaling or schooling fish. This means they must be in a group of their own species. Ten is a good number for most of them, but there are some that need more, and some that can manage with fewer. But all of them must have sufficient of their own species. Without this, there is serious stress on the fish, and this leads to increased aggression and other health problems. The need to be in a group of their own is part of the genetic makeup of each species, so it is not something we should overlook, and it absolutely cannot be ignored or changed.

Shoaling fish includes all tetras, hatchetfishes, pencilfishes, rasboras, danios, barbs, loaches, cory catfish, rainbowfish. As you can see, that is a very large percentage of our fish. All of these, with a few exceptions, are soft water fish, so this need for a group of 10+ is going to be involved in most of the fish you consider.

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Essjay said:

@777james777 That is to be expected. When ammonia is dissolved in water the majority of it becomes ammonium hydroxide. This is basic, that is it raises pH. As the bacteria multiply and start 'eating' ammonia, obviously ammonia is removed from the water and it is turned into into acidic nitrite, which will lower the pH. The thing which usually stops pH dropping too far is KH. Your KH is very low meaning you are risk of it all being used up and the pH dropping too far once nitrite appears.

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Essjay said:

@777james777 That is to be expected. When ammonia is dissolved in water the majority of it becomes ammonium hydroxide. This is basic, that is it raises pH. As the bacteria multiply and start 'eating' ammonia, obviously ammonia is removed from the water and it is turned into into acidic nitrite, which will lower the pH. The thing which usually stops pH dropping too far is KH. Your KH is very low meaning you are risk of it all being used up and the pH dropping too far once nitrite appears.

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777james777 said:

Thank you, i will definitely up the numbers then to like 15-20 then they will be happy and not stressed. I’d say a few died should they be replaced I’m guessing ?

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Essjay said:

Test in another 3 days, then another 3, then another 3 until the readings are ammonia less than 0.75 and nitrite over 2.




Other methods of fishless cycling say to add ammonia every time it drops to zero. But this adds so much ammonia that it is turned into a lot of nitrite - so much nitrite that the cycle stalls. TwoTankAmin did a lot of research into cycling in scientific papers and wrote the method on here so that if ammonia is only added when his method says nitrite cannot get high enough to stall the cycle. Each 1 ppm ammonia is turned into something like 3 ppm nitrite so it doesn't take much ammonia to get get 15 ppm nitrite.

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You can do a water change to replenish KH, but you can also add bicarbonate of soda. There may already be a tub in the kitchen; if not it's in the home baking aisle in the supermarket.
Remind me, your tank is about 130 litres? If it is, if the pH drops take out a small amount of the water, add 3 x level 5 ml spoonfuls of bicarbonate of soda, stir till it's all dissolved then pour it back into the tank.
This is for cycling only as it adds a lot of sodium to the water and the soft water fish you need will be harmed by all that sodium. At the end of the cycle we do do a very large water change which will remove it before getting fish.
When you have fish, you'll be doing weekly 50% water changes which will put back KH. Also, since you need fish which come from soft acidic water they'll be quite happy even if the pH drifts downwards.

Small fish-only plastic tubs are very useful for all sorts of things including mixing bicarb into tank water. If you eat yoghurt, or individual cheesecakes or trifles, save the pots

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Byron said:

Those numbers are certainly good for the fish, but you won't have space for any others. Once we know the species we can judge numbers. I would stay in the 12 range for most, with more for certain species.

You don't have fish yet if memory serve me, so are you looking ahead when you say some die and are replaced? Let's hope none die. Some species are better than others, and some stores the same. I know of stores where every fish I ever bought seemed to have problems, while fish from others never did. I stopped using the bad stores obviously, but the source does matter.

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Essjay said:

The huge water change at the end of cycling is because cycling makes a lot of nitrate. Although nitrate isn't as poisonous as ammonia and nitrite it still has long term effects so we do that big water change to remove all the nitrate that's been made. Basically, it resets the tank water back to the same as the tap water.

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