New Juwel 96 Tank - Fish/Plants/Cycle Log

[bushbrother]

I think I would up the cories by a couple. The DG are best with no more than 1 male so if you want more than one, the second should be a female. I'm not sure how long the shrimp will last in a tank with fish as big as a DG.

OK, so 6 x Corydoras Julii and a male/female pair of DGs. You really think the DG will pick on the shrimp? They are not that large a fish, would have thought a shrimp was too big ...

 

[OldMan47]

I find the cherries are rather small and will be quite vulnerable when they are molting. A dwarf gourami grows to well over 2 inches long and is not a thin narrow bodied fish to start with. I would expect a molting cherry shrimp to become a meal for an adult dwarf gourami.

 

[bushbrother]

I find the cherries are rather small and will be quite vulnerable when they are molting. A dwarf gourami grows to well over 2 inches long and is not a thin narrow bodied fish to start with. I would expect a molting cherry shrimp to become a meal for an adult dwarf gourami.

Hmmmm, OK, I kinda had my heart set on the cherry shrimp, and I am guessing the Amano ones will not fair any better? I plan to get quite young DGs so should only be about 1 inch ... lets hope that growing up with the shrimp in the tank will allow them to be friends

 

[waterdrop]

DGs like to stay high in the tank so it might be interesting to hear whether they eat the shrimp or not, please remember to let us know someday! DGs also can vary quite a bit in individual personality, so if your particular male seems to get too rough with the female you might consider two females, if you feel the filter/stocking situation would be ok.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[bushbrother]

Day 63: So I finally gave in this weekend and went ahead and bought my fish I checked for Ammonia and Nitrites before going out to get them and bothe were 0ppm.

I got the exact list from my post above, bought them home and sat the bags in the water for about 15 mins. They all seemed to disappear behid the bogwood/plants and were very skitty, as can be expected. I got 3 cherry shrimp (and i see what you mean, they are only about 1/2 an inch right now) too, but when unbagging them I noted there were 2 little fish fry in with them (must have got caught in the net when the fish shop guy was searching for shrimp!), I dropped them in too anyway.

That afternoon I went out for a few hours, on my return i looked in, the fish seemed pretty happy and were schooling together. I could not see the 2 little fry and there was only 1 shrimp busy working on the bogwood ... oh dear I thought. But then yesterday I looked again and spotted all 3 shrimp and then the 2 little fry swimming right close to the surface ... so no casualties as yet I need to get a picture of the 2 fry up here for ID as I did not note which tank he took them from, They look like tiny tetra of some sort, not neon though, they have a black kind of colour on them.

I have been checking the water stats every 12 hours as per routine and Ammonia and Nitrites have been consistantly 0ppm

Now on to a couple of questions ...

- How often should I feed these guys when they are new to the tank? 2 times a day lightly?

- My 6 cories seem to always hang out in 1 particular corner and spend ages swimming up and down the glass almost like they are swimming against their reflection, if i place my hand over the glass they immediately go about searching in the sand. They only stop doing this when there is food put in. I wondered if I needed to put some kind of backing on that part of the tank, strange thing is it is on the right hand side, not the back. Currently I have no backing on the tank, the back is almost flush to a cream coloured wall and they dont seem to swim up and down this bit. What do you suggest?

Oh and I almost forgot: A HUGE THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED ME OUT ON THIS POST, MY FISH WOULD NOT BE AS HAPPY WITHOUT YOU!

 

[waterdrop]

I would only feed them once a day and even lighter than you will after a week or so, I'd only basically feed what they will consume in about 1 minute and leave them acting hungry. After a few days, when its even more obvious to you that they feel well adjusted to their new environment, increase the amount in the single feeding to what they can eat in 2-3 minutes. I'd probably keep it to a single feeding a day unless you made two feedings be extremely small and if I did that it would only be on rare occasions. Likewise, I'd not worry if I missed a day now and then.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[bushbrother]

I would only feed them once a day and even lighter than you will after a week or so, I'd only basically feed what they will consume in about 1 minute and leave them acting hungry. After a few days, when its even more obvious to you that they feel well adjusted to their new environment, increase the amount in the single feeding to what they can eat in 2-3 minutes. I'd probably keep it to a single feeding a day unless you made two feedings be extremely small and if I did that it would only be on rare occasions. Likewise, I'd not worry if I missed a day now and then.

~~waterdrop~~

OK thanks ... Do you have any comments on my cories swimming up and down the glass alot? They seemed to have stopped doing it so much now, but they still do it quite alot. Are they just getting used to the boundaries?

Also I have another question, most of the fish seem to be using the lower half of the tank, I only ever see the 2 gourami's in the top half, shouldnt the rainbows be going up to midway too? Its not really an issue, just I thought they whould explore a bit more. Again maybe its because they are new to the tank ...

Edit: Forgot to say my water readings are still 0ppm, so looking good

 

[waterdrop]

That sounds like a normal bunch of corys to me! I've had them do that same behavior. Its a lot better to see them doing that than just sitting on the bottom all the time, as happens when their group is too small. I suspect it probably means that if they were in nature, their natural food searching territory would be bigger than your tank and as a group they would be moving off to search a different niche of the environment for all the things they want, food, nice water and mates!

~~waterdrop~~

 

[bushbrother]

That sounds like a normal bunch of corys to me! I've had them do that same behavior. Its a lot better to see them doing that than just sitting on the bottom all the time, as happens when their group is too small. I suspect it probably means that if they were in nature, their natural food searching territory would be bigger than your tank and as a group they would be moving off to search a different niche of the environment for all the things they want, food, nice water and mates!

~~waterdrop~~

Yes, both my "schools" of fish (6 rainbows and 6 cories) seem to be schooling well and always move around together. I was more worried that they were going to hurt themselves going up and down like that, they do go off and scout around together, but not as much as I thought they would, they seem obsessed by the one side of the aquarium, hence why I asked about backing etc ...

 

[bushbrother]

I was also looking at my proposed stocking list and saw this site called aqadvisor.com ... I filled in the details and it tells me this:

Stocking Profile

I was under the impression that this would not overstock my tank ... thoughts?

 

[aly_starh]

That stocking looks fine, I would not reccomend adding more fish though.

Nice choice of fish

 

[drobbyb]

Good choice on the dwarf neon rainbows. They require a little more care than your average tropical fish. They require a mostly vegetable diet and weekly 50% water changes.

 

[bushbrother]

Good choice on the dwarf neon rainbows. They require a little more care than your average tropical fish. They require a mostly vegetable diet and weekly 50% water changes.

Can i ask why they would require such large water changes? Surely as long as the ammonia/nitrites are 0ppm (which they are) and the nitrAtes are kept in check by weekly 25% changes then there will not be an issue ... are they very sensitive to NitrAtes? I have not seen this written anywhere ...

Here is a first attempt of a video of my fish ... sorry for low quality Appreciate any comments

For those who are interested, the 3 cherry shrimp are still there, the DGs have had a look at them a few times but no damage yet ...

My Aquarium Video

 

[waterdrop]

From what I've seen, Robby knows his rainbows pretty well. He'll probably give you some specifics next time he gets on.

I will take the opportunity to make a couple of general comments though, and I don't know whether they actually apply here but it just seems like there's a possibility they might and therefor would be a good time.. You're at a good stage now of absorbing lots of beginner info: you've done a real fishless cycle and worked hard at it, which is the best way to more deeply take in the knowledge of the three important substances, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate and the two bacterial species, Nitrosomonas and Nitrospira and the process of the nitrogen cycle. But as applied amateur hobbyists we always need to be humble about the fact that really there can be -hundreds- of substances in our freshwater tank and really there are probably at least dozens of species of bacteria in there battling for environmental niches. And the dynamics of even the individual substances can be more complicated than we normally think about.

Ammonia, for instance, is always present, its just kept normally very low in our tank by the presence of the working biofilter. The ammonia molecules are still in there, being produced by any number of heterotrophs as they process the fish waste, excess fishfood and plant debris. Those molecules, along with NH4+ from the fishes gills, are constantly circulating with the water and then being consumed by the autotrophs in the filter. Even though our simple ammonia test kit may always show zero ppm and our biofilter may be big and mature, the flow itself is still constant and varies in its tiny levels around the tank, depending on circulation.

Nitrate, as we like to mention frequently, is not just a thing in itself but is also used as an indicator we can go by to make a very rough judgement, a blind speculation really, about hundreds of other unmeasured substances in the water, heavy metals and their constructs and dissolved organic carbon along with lots and lots of different organic compounds.

Anyway, I just mention this to remind us that its really a lot more complicated than we even normally get into talking about and so it stands to reason and might not surprise us that there will be observations that fishkeepers make about individual species of fish that can be very valid observations but don't particularly fit in with the little subset of readings we take. Waiting 4-6 months before putting neon/cards in a new tank is one of the most obvious examples of that. It seems to be an observation that's held up pretty well, despite wondering whether it might just come from some people not really being cycled or the fish being sensitive, and so many feel that it may really be due to some balance of other chemicals in the typical freshwater tank that we just don't watch and measure typically.. but the observation itself is still valid.

Well, all that's just to say that I always try keep these humble thoughts about the limitations of what we really measure and know in mind. It helps me relax more when things happen that I just don't quite understand.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[bushbrother]

Wow, what a post

Thanks as always for your comments, and I await what Robby says I think that doing the fishless cycle was a great thing, and a good learning experience. Without you guys on this forum I no doubt would have done what many people do and just plop the fish in I am going to wait 4-6 months before adding my Neons too, and that is all thanks to you guys!

My fish currently look really happy and its good to know that all that effort and waiting was worth it in the end

What do you think of my video?