My Plan... Opinions Welcomed...

[anton]

My and the Girlfriend have just brought a 24x18x12 tank for our lounge. It got a Fluval 104 filter withe the stanard bits an pieces inside. a heater (unknown make model) a sand subtrate and a atlantis style scene. It was all set up on saturday afternoon and the water has been crystal clear since monday night.

I''m planning on getting a cory (not sure on the cory atm) and 2 zebra danios on this saturday to get the cycle of the tank going well. I know most of you like the fishless cycle but the g/f wants to see some life asap, and as the guy in the lfs said she could have fish after 3 days shes getting a little excited... hehe.

Oop's ive been typing ages... Here's me questions:

1/ Does this Sound Like a good plan?

2/ What are you recomendations for a testing kit, i have a nitrite tester (which is still showing 0). Are the testing strips any good?

Cheers All
Anton

 

[MXPX4318]

I think drop the cory at first as they're not good cycling fish, get more danios because they're schooling fish and need to be in schools so start with atleast three to start cycling and eventually get to six or more preferably, as far as test kits I'm not sure what you can get across the pond but if you can get an aquarium pharm master test kit I recommend one of those.

 

[sylvia]

Don't use a cory to cycle. The danios would be ok but you'd eventualy need to build up the group ot 5. If your girlfriend insists on seeing some life but would appreciate that fish are alive and don't deserve to be put through the stress of a cycle, she may agree for you to either fishless cycle or use an apple snail (yes, these will work just like a fish and you can feed it fish flake). If you do go with fish, make sure you are doing water changes every other day until your ammonia is at 0 and then every 3-4 days until your nitrIte is down. Weekly will do once the tank's cycled. Any liquid-based test kit which includes ammonia, nitrIte, nitrAte and pH will do. Don't buy test strips and don't worry about your pH. Knowing the pH is more useful simply because it can indicate when something is wrong. Oh and you may also want to tell your girfriend that if you fishless cycle it will take less time than if you cycle with fish and you'll be able to put in a lot more fish once its done than you would if you added the danios. Plus, are you shure you want danios and cories? Have you researched other fish like cichlids, gouramies, killies, puffers, oddball fish etc? You don't want to find later on that you'd have preffered something else. You can do the research while you fishless cycle and if you can get some mature filter media or gravel from an established tank, you'll find a fishless cycle is instant but also gives you time to stock according to what you truly want. You can also aquascape while you wait (as I said, if you add mature filter media the cycle will be complete after just a day or two...) and with a fishless cycle you wont need to deal with dead fish.

 

[anton]

Ok Cheers both.

What other hardy fish are there avalable other than the danios then?

 

[sylvia]

Platies are ideal. If you don't want fry, you'll want to go for males only. They only get to 1.5" and you could easily cycle with 2 males if that's the way you choose to go. If you do want fry, keep in mind you'll want a ratio of 2 females to every male and you wont want fry whilst you are cycling so only get platies to cycle with if you are willing to either stick to only males or get 2 males and 4 females later on (leaving less space for other fish). Black skirt tetras are also hardy but need to be in a shoal of 6 and can get nippy so only get them if you know you won't have any long-finned fish in future. Swordtails would work but I wouldn't reccomend getting more than one male but females get pretty big and the male to female ratio is like that of platies (plus swords and platies can hybridize). Males get to a maximum of 3" while females can get to 5". I don't think many others are suitable to cycle with realy. Guppies and mollies sometimes work but it depends on the strain - particularly with the guppies where the more in-bred/line-bred, fancy strains are quite fragile. They need the same male to female ratio as swordtails and platies. Mollies also happen to get to 4" and guppies (particularly males) are prone to being nipped so watch what you put in with them. Harlequin rasboras and black phantom tetras, as well as rosy barbs, cherry barbs, checker barbs and tiger barbs are also quite hardy but I still wouldn't reccomend cycling with them and tiger barbs, in particular, could limmit future inhabitants due to their nippy-ness while rosy barbs get quite big. All these fish, except for cherry barbs, also need to be in a school of 6. The only other fish I have found to be very hardy is three-spot gouramies but if you get one of these, your choices for other inhabitants would be more limmited (if you end up with a male you won't be able to get any more gouramies and no matter what you wont be able to get any nippy fish). I reccomend you go for a couple of male platies myself.