What Are Good Tank Mates

[fordie1990]

Hey guys&girls just set up my first tropical tank as have down graded from marine as not having as much time to clean and prean the tank so set the tank up about 5 weeks ago now just added the fish late last week i have never kept tropical before so all help will be welcomed.
I want my tank to look like a show tank dence plants loads of colour like u see in the likes of sealife center so specs are

BRAND:Fluvel
MODEL:Roma 125
WATER VOLUME:125ltrs
FILTER:Fluvel U3 internal
TEMP: 26-28C

Inhabitats are:
7X cardinal teras
2X bristle nose pleco 1xM 1xF
3X female fighters
1X platie

DECOR:
MIX OF LIVE PLANTS 2TYPES
4x PEBLES 4"X2"
1X DRIFTWOOD smalish approx 6.5-7" long
approx 12-15kg or dorset gravel(natural)

what could go in as want some thing a little bigger than what i have maybe 4"-5" and 1-2 fish about 6"-7" max as a center peice
i dont want guarmis/rams as i know people that say they die at click of a finger but i realy like anglefish and have been told by lfs if i add small angles they wont eat my cardinals when there bigger as cardinal where xl when i got then.
i want fish for all regions of the tank as evey thing i have at the moment is at the bottom all the time so fish for middle and top regions moreso and a good cleaning crew please for bottom like shrimps etc.
thanks all

 

[waterdrop]

Hi fordie1990 and Welcome to the Freshwater beginners section!

We have a great bunch of species advisors here, so I think you have no worries that they will be right with you in the coming days and weeks to help you work on a great stocking plan for your 33G/125L freshwater tank! Glad to hear that even though you want to lower the amount of maintenance work that it takes to run a marine tank you still want to put in the significant work it would take to do a colorful freshwater tank (they can be really beautiful, as can be frequently seen in pictures in the planted section and here too!)

OK, so back to you and your current situation. So as a newcomer we of course don't know anything about you. Had you been keeping salt for years? Had you gone over to salt from previous experience with freshwater tanks? Let us know so we won't throw too much beginner stuff at you if you have already developed experienced skills.

One of the core skills of freshwater keeping is creating great water of course and at the center of that is the miraculous gift of the "biofilter." It's one of the three functions of a typical aquarium filter but is the one least understood by most beginners and least well communicated within the hobby and industry.

The biofilter carries out the Nitrogen Cycle (one of earth's natural cycles as studied in environmental and all the life sciences.) We have a writeup about the Nitrogen Cycle in our Beginners Resource Center here with our freshwater section.

So in order to have that great water ready for fish, we normally take a month or two to perform what we call a "Fishless Cycle" in order to ensure that we've grown large enough bacterial colonies of the correct two specific species groups within the biomedia of the filter, to carry out this thing we call "cycling." We promote this method for beginners largely for two reasons: It keeps our fish completely out of the poisons that can give them small amount of permanent tissue damage and secondly it is just one heck of a lot easier to perform than the constant water changing necessary when fish are in the tank being the ammonia source.

With fish having just gone in this past week, you are probably right at the beginning of what we'd call a Fish-In Cycling Situation (unless you've primed the filter with "mature media" from someone else's (or another tank of your own) filter. If you have a good liquid-based test kit, post up your test results or if not, we'd like to get you performing daily 50% water changes (with good technique) until you can find a good kit.

Good water change technique just means using a good water conditioner (Seachem Prime would be our best example) to remove the chlorine/chloramine, assuming it's city water, and roughly temperature matching the return water (your hand is good enough for this.)

Anyway, let us know your circumstances with respect to test kits, conditioner, previous knowledge of the skills mentioned and the members will help take it from there! We handle dozens of fish-in cycling situations every month or so, so there's lots of experience.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[fordie1990]

hey i have never had freshwater before only other fish i have had it 2 goldfish when i was kid have had the tank as full marine set up for about 5/6 years have cleaned the tank 4 tome to get rid of all salt the filter has been run for last 5 months in my granmas tropical set so all bactria is in there thats needed i have done a little bit of research but not got anything of great use i know a little bit about freshwater but not inuf to go chargin into a shop buying exacty the right fish. i did a water test the day i added the fish & then the day after and nothing had changed.

Who can tell me if any of the following are compatable as i have just take a list of name of fish i liked in the shop.

YELLOW LAB
CONVICT
PARROTFISH
BALA SHARK
RED DEVIL
KOI ANGLEFISH
MARBLE ANGLEFISH
BLACK ANGLEFISH
CLOWN LOACH
GHOST KNIFE
CLEANER SHTIMP
TEXAS CICHLID
GUPPIE
PHANTOM TETRA
BLACK SKIRT TETRA
NEON TETRA
MALE BETTA
KEYHOLE CICHLIDS
VELVET CICHLID

Can some one advise me on if there compatable and the size thanks guys

 

[fordie1990]

hey i have never had freshwater before only other fish i have had it 2 goldfish when i was kid have had the tank as full marine set up for about 5/6 years have cleaned the tank 4 tome to get rid of all salt the filter has been run for last 5 months in my granmas tropical set so all bactria is in there thats needed i have done a little bit of research but not got anything of great use i know a little bit about freshwater but not inuf to go chargin into a shop buying exacty the right fish. i did a water test the day i added the fish & then the day after and nothing had changed.

Who can tell me if any of the following are compatable as i have just take a list of name of fish i liked in the shop.

YELLOW LAB
CONVICT
PARROTFISH
BALA SHARK
RED DEVIL
KOI ANGLEFISH
MARBLE ANGLEFISH
BLACK ANGLEFISH
CLOWN LOACH
GHOST KNIFE
CLEANER SHTIMP
TEXAS CICHLID
GUPPIE
PHANTOM TETRA
BLACK SKIRT TETRA
NEON TETRA
MALE BETTA
KEYHOLE CICHLIDS
VELVET CICHLID

Can some one advise me on if there compatable and the size thanks guys