Buying Fish Tomorrow

[TixeeriF]

Hi all,

I've received some great advice on here during my fishless cycle and I'm now confident that mt tank is ready to go.

It's an Amazon (rebadged Aqua-One as far as I can tell) 45USG / 160L corner unit, external Aqua-One Aquis 1000 filter with fine gravel, lots of bogwood, and some plants (I'll add even more plants tomorrow when I get the fish). pH is usually around 7.3, but drops off with the bogwood to near 6 (my pH crashed last week during cycling!)

Here's my stocking plan - I was hoping you'd agree with it!
But if not, please let me know...

6 Dalmation Mollies (hopefully all female)
1 Bristlenose plec (or another small plec of some sort)
2 German Blue Rams (1 male, 1 female)
2 Cockatoo Apistos (1 male, 1 female)
1 Dwarf Gourami (male)

a q advisor .com seems to think this is OK (stocked to 98% with plenty of filtration), but I'd rather have some human feedback!

Since I'm cycled I'm planning to go fully stocked pretty much straight away, though may delay on adding the Dwarf Gourami. I think I should add the Rams and Apistos at the same time so they can establish territory together rather than fighting about it later if I added one after the other!

The bogwood is setup so that there are two different caves for the Rams and Apistos at either side of the tank (about 20" apart).

Any advice before I hit my favourite fish shop (Wildwoods) tomorrow?!

Cheers,

Scott

 

[Aqua Tom]

First things first. 160 litres is 42.3 us/gallons not 45 as you stated.

The BN plec will be fine

The Apistos will be fine

Cant tell you about the others.


A~T

 

[waterdrop]

Especially if you are going to go for a full stocking immediately, you need to be sure you've passed the qualification week in the correct way: The filter needs to be able to drop 5ppm ammonia to zero ppm ammonia and zero ppm nitrite(NO2) within 12 hours of when the ammonia was dosed and do that for a week. It's not uncommon for our beginners to confuse getting double-zeros at 24 hours with getting double-zeros at 12 hours.

That stocking plan does not seem overstocked to me but I have not looked up and studied the adult maximum size of all of those species recently, so I could be forgetting how big some of them might get.. at a rough look it seems ok and the species seem like they'd be ok together to me (I have no experience with whether the apistos would be bothered by mollies wiggling through their territory.)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[TixeeriF]

Thanks for the advice guys.

My filter has passed the qualification now. I've had double zeros for ammonia and nitrite, every 12 hours, for just over a week now.

Because my tank is about as high as it is wide I'm hoping that the mollies will stay higher up in the tank and so won't bother the apistos who will probably stick closer to the ground.

Just going to neaten a few things up in the tank and then I'll be off to the shops!