Another "sweaty sock"

[colingalbraith]

Hello,

Pleased to meet you all. I'm Colin from Edinburgh in Scotland.

After years of moaning about getting one, and with much persuasion from my dad and future brother-in-law who are tropical fishkeeping enthusiasts, my wife finally agreed and bought me a tropical fish setup for Christmas.

It's not a huge tank, 60x30x35 cm, but it's big enough for my office and big enough for me to get pleasure from, I'm sure.

I set it up at the weekend with gravel, tree root (can't remember the proper name) and a few aquarium pebbles. The water was conditioned and then I added a few plants this afternoon.

All I need now is fish.

I'm totally new to this whole thing other than reading various books through the days of when I pined for a tank, and I was thinking about getting one or two male Platy's or a couple of Guppy's to start things off.

How long should I wait until adding the initial inhabitant to my tank? PH is 7.0 and there are no nitrites as expected.

Glad this forum is here. There only seems to be so much that can be gleaned from books and since my dad and BIL are not always available, it's reassuring to know I can pop in here and gain from the wealth of experience.

Cheers,

Colin

[William]

Welcome
I hope you get a lot of joy from your "first" aquarium (they will become many if you like it, trust me) and that you will like it here.

Regarding your questions.
The fish you are thinking about sounds good and i would wait around 5 days before i added a singel fish. I would than wait 5 more days before I get more fish. Only feed the first fish very litlle during the first five days.

You have allready read up on aquariums but I would still like to invite you to download our tropical fish ebook for beginners (http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/ebook.html) which asnwers common questions and are written to help beginners get there first aquarium up and running successfully.

[tzelinski7701]

i have a ten gallon tank with two platty's that I got around the 9th of January. i added two male guppies two weeks after that but they perished so I decided to wait for the tank to cycle and currently....and for the last 2 and 1/2 weeks.... my amonia levels have been at 4.0. my point is don't add more than the platty's until the tank has cycled

[colingalbraith]

I've got 18 fish at the moment. All doing nicely so far :-)

[macd]

Hi Colin,

Will be posting a new thread of my own soon - good to hear your tank is doing well


MacD

[MudBlood]

im a fan of silver sharks, and if you can get them there, try and snag some khuli loaches and clown loaches, they will mess the gravel around a little, but they are such fantastic fish to watch.

Mud.