New here and to Apisto's

[fatmarley]

Greetings everyone, I use to be a humble fish owner with a few tetra's and other common fish, until I saw the Apisto Cockatoo.

Now I am in love.

I have sold off my fish and bought all new substrate for my tank. I am using ADA Power soil (large) as my base with 2 9l bags of Amazonia Soil on top of that, in a 40gal breeder.

I have various caves, but I have made two more and right now I am just cycling my tank with the new soil and plants.

This is my question..err.. these are my questions.

My whole intention is to have a harem (1 - 2) and breed them if I can succeed. But I wonder if I can add other fish to the tank. Im not to interested in dither fish, but rather other apisto's. Which of these (mating couples if possible) would be a good match in the tank::


Panduro (heard it is very aggressive)
Agassizs
INKA50
Cruzi (heard it is very aggressive)
Eremnopyge
Ram (Ramirezi)
Borelli's

I have heard that cory's are a bad addition to breeding tanks, what fish can I add to take its place? and are Amano shrimp safe cause I plan to use them in stage 2 of my cycling.

(Before, After and Caves.)

[jeffs99dime]

welcome to a.c.

[fatmarley]

I have one further question about these charts you get with Ph tests; How accurate are they?

I have just put in new soil and my ph has dropped to 6 and my KH to 2, which means I have a concentration of 66mg/l of CO2 in my tank.

Since I want to raise Apisto's with a low PH and I need to use aquatic plants as cover, I worry they might go belly up from lack of O2.

Please cure my ignorance!!!

[crackatinny]

Welcome to AC:thumb:

[fatmarley]

never mind, solved on another forum...