New Here With New Sixty Gallon

[bird_lover6]

Hi,

I just put water in my new Marineland 60 gallon aquarium (48 wide X 24 high X 13 deep).

I installed an Emperor 400 power filter and a Marineland 250 watt heater.

Bought bags of rocks for substrate and added a few plastic plants I already had until I can get some live plants going.

Added appropriate amount of dechlorinator and Stress Zyme to get some bacteria going.

Now what?

(My intro is in the intro section.)

 

[waterdrop]

Hi bird_lover6 and Welcome to TFF!

Great luck that you've stumbled across TFF in your searches and come here for discussion so early on! The members here are great and you'll find lot's of suggestions and help to get your skills going if you are new to the hobby.

There are many aspects to the hobby where you may find to your surprise that the experienced hobbyists here differ quite significantly from the things you may pick up in the local fish shop (LFS) or in typical startup advice books.

In particular, we've found that bottled bacteria starter products simply don't ever amount to anything and are really just part of the picture that stores present to try and put a pretty face on an aspect of the hobby that takes a -lot- of patience (and therefor is often not good for business among average consumers!) So the subject of the bacteria in the filters is glossed over and made to sound simple but its really one of the most core beginner skills and a particular learning focus of our "Your new freshwater tank" forum here.

Have a read of the "The Nitrogen Cycle", "The Fishless Cycle" and "The Fish-In Cycle" and "What's Cycling?" articles in our Beginners Resouce Center -- its a great starter and can get you talking with us! Other important skills are "the gravel-clean-water-change" and the art of developing fish stocking plans!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[bird_lover6]

Thanks for all the good advice. I will start reading.

These are the fish I'm most interested in:



Pearl gourami (my favorite)

Dwarf gourami

Angelfish

Some type of catfish.

Neon tetras

I realize it will take quite some time to introduce all of those fish to my aquarium. (I had aquariums years ago, but was mostly "flying by the seat of my pants," although I was always pretty successful. I plan to be much more knowledgable this time.)

 

[waterdrop]

Very nice ideas. A tank that big should allow pairs (or trios) of the pearls and dwarves to not feel like picking on each other I'd think (I'd run this by Ludwig and the folks in the gourami subforum though and see what their take is.) If this seems all ok I might think about both sets of gouramis and a largish bunch of corys (assuming that's the kind of catfish you meant) as all part of the initial stocking. I'd then focus on enjoying them and letting the tank further mature. At about 6 months out, when the tank is finally really nice (there's something about 6 months being kind of perfect for many tanks) I'd introduce batch after batch of neons or cards until you have a really big shoal (actual numbers to be planned out in the coming months as you discuss your stocking plan) and then, after the neons have had a chance to settle, I'd look for and introduce young angelfish. The angels will then view the neons as having always been there and will go many more years before starting to eat them, if ever. Its possible the pearls might pick at the angels but hopefully not at all given that you will keep 3 pearls and the male will be busy with the two females (just like the dwarf gouramis.) Probably when you do out all the numbers you will have still more room (you know how to do the stocking homework and numbers, right?)

~~waterdrop~~