Hello everyone! Newbie fishkeeper posting here for the first time! 😁💜

[Emmalovesfrogs]

Hello, I'm Emma. I work in home healthcare and my autistic self is currently hyper fixating on aquaculture as my main hobby. I have one 75 gallon tank. Filtration systems include a top fin pro series 70 and a marineland canister filter. I'm running an aerator system and I have several live plants of different types and a few large plastic plants that I got before I started adding live plants to my setup. I also have a tree looking thing that's hollowed out on the bottom and has several Tufts of artificial grass that I may be substituting for some driftwood. Currently I have 75 lb of naturalistic gravel as my substrate. Currently I have 11 African dwarf frogs, five of which are luecistic. I've had most of them since late November/early December and they seem to really love the tank. I see them swimming around as much as the fish and sometimes floating on top of the water like it's a lazy river. Currently I have around 21-22 assorted platy fish including blue wag, painted, peppermint, sunburst, and blue calico. I have three green cory catfish and three albino cory catfish. I have around 13-15 assorted guppies including swordtail and dumbo guppies. I have nine serpae tetras. I have four molly fish including two fancy mollies and two dalmatian mollies. I have one common plecostomus.. I'm aware of how large they become and that I will need to upgrade my tank eventually. I have two peacock gudgeons. The commercial fish store listed them as non-communal fish and I'll be getting a few more soon. I also have around 40-50 ghost shrimp. I'm thinking of adding a layer of sand or some type of aquarium soil on top on the gravel. I also intend to purchase a plant bundle from Father Fish. 80 plants for $50 is a pretty good deal. Currently my water is well cycled and my ammonia and nitrite levels are very low. Nitrate is hovering around 20 ppm. I do feel that I need to adjust my pH as it is usually around 6.8 and my target pH is 7.2. I've tried using chemicals and the pH falls back to 6.8 after a day or two so I need something natural to raise my pH a bit. Otherwise I think that's all and I would appreciate any advice and suggestions on ways to move toward having a bioactive aquarium.

 

[BigDog]

Welcome to this great forum

Is the purple plant real ?

It takes time for your aquarium too cycle

It may take a week or even longer to cycle

 

[Magnum Man]

Looks nice... you could add a few Limestone slabs, that would buffer your water... water is a little cloudy, maybe from your frogs???

 

[Fishkeeper123]

Hello, I'm Emma. I work in home healthcare and my autistic self is currently hyper fixating on aquaculture as my main hobby. I have one 75 gallon tank. Filtration systems include a top fin pro series 70 and a marineland canister filter. I'm running an aerator system and I have several live plants of different types and a few large plastic plants that I got before I started adding live plants to my setup. I also have a tree looking thing that's hollowed out on the bottom and has several Tufts of artificial grass that I may be substituting for some driftwood. Currently I have 75 lb of naturalistic gravel as my substrate. Currently I have 11 African dwarf frogs, five of which are luecistic. I've had most of them since late November/early December and they seem to really love the tank. I see them swimming around as much as the fish and sometimes floating on top of the water like it's a lazy river. Currently I have around 21-22 assorted platy fish including blue wag, painted, peppermint, sunburst, and blue calico. I have three green cory catfish and three albino cory catfish. I have around 13-15 assorted guppies including swordtail and dumbo guppies. I have nine serpae tetras. I have four molly fish including two fancy mollies and two dalmatian mollies. I have one common plecostomus.. I'm aware of how large they become and that I will need to upgrade my tank eventually. I have two peacock gudgeons. The commercial fish store listed them as non-communal fish and I'll be getting a few more soon. I also have around 40-50 ghost shrimp. I'm thinking of adding a layer of sand or some type of aquarium soil on top on the gravel. I also intend to purchase a plant bundle from Father Fish. 80 plants for $50 is a pretty good deal. Currently my water is well cycled and my ammonia and nitrite levels are very low. Nitrate is hovering around 20 ppm. I do feel that I need to adjust my pH as it is usually around 6.8 and my target pH is 7.2. I've tried using chemicals and the pH falls back to 6.8 after a day or two so I need something natural to raise my pH a bit. Otherwise I think that's all and I would appreciate any advice and suggestions on ways to move toward having a bioactive aquarium.

Welcome to the forum, I really like how you have frogs in your aquarium which is unusual, are they easy to keep?

 

[Innesfan]

Welcome! Glad youv'e joined us. Are your Serpae tets behaving? That you have nine of them is good. My concern with them would have been their finding the guppy fins enticing.

 

[Emmalovesfrogs]

Looks nice... you could add a few Limestone slabs, that would buffer your water... water is a little cloudy, maybe from your frogs???

Ooh good idea, I'll have to try that. Umm the cloudiness comes and goes. It hasn't been as bad lately, I had to quit doing frequent water changes and let it be. I think overfeeding in a contributing factor.. rather than one large pinch of flakes, I need to do a small pinch and maybe another small pinch if they polish that off and less than a minute. Also do syncing pellets for the frogs and try to distribute them across the tank but possibly giving them too many. And then I do a good size pinch of bloodworms. Still tinkering with how much to feed them so I think the cloudiness will fix itself once I get that dialed in.

 

[Emmalovesfrogs]

Welcome! Glad youv'e joined us. Are your Serpae tets behaving? That you have nine of them is good. My concern with them would have been their finding the guppy fins enticing.

Thank you! I haven't really noticed any fin nipping from the serpae tets, but I did add a few sanke swordtail fry that I got for free from the pet store. I figured they were big enough that the platy fish couldn't eat them but the serpae went after them pretty aggressively. So that might be a problem when the platy fish start having babies. I don't have another tank to put the fry in and I'm hoping at least a few of them will live. One gave birth recently and I haven't seen any fry so that's concerning. And I have two others that are very pregnant.

 

[Emmalovesfrogs]

Welcome to the forum, I really like how you have frogs in your aquarium which is unusual, are they easy to keep?

Thank you! Yeah they are pretty neat. They have about the same parameters as tropical fish. My temp is running at 76 with two heaters going. They just kind of swim around or chill out on top of a plant or sometimes they float around on top. I feed them sinking pellets and they crawl around on the bottom to find them. Sometimes they'll swim to the surface to eat blood worms when I feed the fish.

 

[MaloK]

Hello, and welcome to our modest community.

All the fish you listed are in that 75 ? It's already pretty bioactive for sure.

Currently my water is well cycled and my ammonia and nitrite levels are very low. Nitrate is hovering around 20 ppm.

How old is your setup ? Once cycled, Ammonia and Nitrite should be 0 and remain undetectable all the time. It's probably the cause of your slight water cloudiness. It's not over yet.

I'm thinking of adding a layer of sand or some type of aquarium soil on top on the gravel.

Adding soil in an established aquarium is somewhat a challenge. Adding it to a cycling aquarium can change the chemistry of the water suddenly. You could use root tabs for the plants rooting in substrate instead, or add some plant substrate pebbles to your gravel and cap it with sand.

my pH as it is usually around 6.8 and my target pH is 7.2. I've tried using chemicals and the pH falls back to 6.8 after a day or two

Do you have your source water GH and KH readings ? Lime and corals can take a long time to have effect. And you might prefer to use bags that you install in the tank or even in your filter, that you can remove once your goal is reached.

BTW, that was a pretty complete introduction, i'd say

 

[Emmalovesfrogs]

Welcome to this great forum

Is the purple plant real ?

It takes time for your aquarium too cycle

It may take a week or even longer to cycle

Thank you! The purple and the pink and the two large plants in the back are plastic but the rest of the plants are real plants. I'm thinking of taking out the two big plastic ones in the back and making a limestone pile or some other rock pile. I plan on having my aquarium pretty heavily planted eventually.

 

[Fishkeeper123]

Thank you! Yeah they are pretty neat. They have about the same parameters as tropical fish. My temp is running at 76 with two heaters going. They just kind of swim around or chill out on top of a plant or sometimes they float around on top. I feed them sinking pellets and they crawl around on the bottom to find them. Sometimes they'll swim to the surface to eat blood worms when I feed the fish.

Why 2 heaters?

 

[Emmalovesfrogs]

Hello, and welcome to our modest community.

All the fish you listed are in that 75 ? It's already pretty bioactive for sure.


How old is your setup ? Once cycled, Ammonia and Nitrite should be 0 and remain undetectable all the time. It's probably the cause of your slight water cloudiness. It's not over yet.



Adding soil in an established aquarium is somewhat a challenge. Adding it to a cycling aquarium can change the chemistry of the water suddenly. You could use root tabs for the plants rooting in substrate instead, or add some plant substrate pebbles to your gravel and cap it with sand.



Do you have your source water GH and KH readings ? Lime and corals can take a long time to have effect. And you might prefer to use bags that you install in the tank or even in your filter, that you can remove once your goal is reached.

BTW, that was a pretty complete introduction, i'd say

Yes all of the fish and frogs I listed are in a 75 gallon tank. I plan on taking out at least the two big plastic plants in the back and making a rock pile of some kind. I bought an API master kit and according to their color chart, ammonia and nitrate are zero. Nitrate is around 20 ppm. My pH is around 6.8 and I've been bumping it up to 7.2 with API "pH up" but I need a permanent fix. My aquarium is 3 months old and I only just started tinkering with the pH. I've been running the one marineland canister filter most of that time and using the micron filter once a week. I added the second filtration system and second heater last week. Bumped my temp from 72 to 76 and the top fin pro 70 has a four step system including a ceramic biofilter portion. My goal is to have my aquarium pretty heavily planted but still have a decent amount of open water and stabilize my pH around 7.2-7.4 because I want to add some glass catfish and I've been told they are delicate.

 

[Emmalovesfrogs]

Yes all of the fish and frogs I listed are in a 75 gallon tank. I plan on taking out at least the two big plastic plants in the back and making a rock pile of some kind. I bought an API master kit and according to their color chart, ammonia and nitrate are zero. Nitrate is around 20 ppm. My pH is around 6.8 and I've been bumping it up to 7.2 with API "pH up" but I need a permanent fix. My aquarium is 3 months old and I only just started tinkering with the pH. I've been running the one marineland canister filter most of that time and using the micron filter once a week. I added the second filtration system and second heater last week. Bumped my temp from 72 to 76 and the top fin pro 70 has a four step system including a ceramic biofilter portion. My goal is to have my aquarium pretty heavily planted but still have a decent amount of open water and stabilize my pH around 7.2-7.4 because I want to add some glass catfish and I've been told they are delicate.

I don't currently have a way to test GH and KH.. I guess that's the next thing I need to add to my list. One of the videos I watched from Father Fish aquatics recommended adding the sand on top of the gravel, plant pellets is definitely something I'll have to look into if I go that route. Thank you

 

[Emmalovesfrogs]

Why 2 heaters?

Because it was cheaper to add a second heater than it was to buy a bigger one.

 

[GaryE]

Because it was cheaper to add a second heater than it was to buy a bigger one.

Two heaters are always better than one, given that when modern heaters fail, they tend to turn off. Old school ones would roast the tank, so that is an improvement.

And @Emmalovesfrogs - welcome!