New aquarium stocking questions
I started a 20 gallon long tank little over 2 weeks ago. My fishless cycling is coming to an end my ammonia is 0.25 - 0.5 ppm, 0 ppm nitrate and 10-20 ppm nitrate. I have been adding about 3ml of 10% ammonia every day for the past ~2 weeks. Today is the last day I am adding ammonia and once it drops to 0 ppm I am getting fish.
Stocking Options:
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Tiger Barbs (7-8 mix of normal and green) / Gold Barbs (5-6). This is what I am more leaning toward.
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Gold Barbs / rummynose tetra / neon tetra
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Assortment of tetras. Mainly because I like the rummynose tetras a lot.
I understand that rummynose tetras and neon tetras like slightly acidic water. My tap pH is 7.4-7.8 and my aquarium is also in that range. I also understand that as long as there is no huge swing in pH most fish are ok with it.
What can I add if my tank gets algae. Mainly whats compatible with the fish I have chosen above (shrimp? snails?). Someone recommended nerite snails. I have this substrate and wondering if this will be too coarse for shrimp or snails?
My plants are coming in tomorrow and once I get fish I am gonna post some pics of my tank.
Posted Apr 24, 2012, 11:49 PM UTC
Great ph for barbs but I would expect them to beat those tetras up pretty bad. The tetras will live in that ph but never colour up to their full potential. Smaller rainbow fish such as Madagascar or neon rainbows may be a better choice with the barbs. If you want to keep tetras try lowering your ph with drift wood, peat filter media, or an acid buffer (that turns kh into CO2 there by reducing its effect on buffering your ph up)
I saw some madagascar rainbows when I was picking up my dwarf rasboras the other day. They are really nice looking fish and I would've picked some up if I wasn't restricting myself to fish from southeast asia.