Need advice on populating my first 10gal

[Geist]

Hi guys!

I'm new to everything, so any advice will be welcome. While I work on cycling my tank, I want to start planning up my little fish community.

Essentials info: 10gal, 50w heater at 78F, a plastic twisted log thingy and a tacky plastic greek temple front, a crypto wendtii, a crypto "willis" and three dwarf sagittaria

I got the aquarium from my sister in law's basement cleaning, it had been in storage for months, and I went to the store thinking I should get sound advice. I currently have one mickey mouse platy and one wag tail platy, both females, probably both pregnant, in an uncycled tank. I don't want to bring them back, adding more stress to them and probably leaving them for someone worse than me to buy.

I've read up enough now, thanks to great forums like this one, that I understand what I must do to keep my pets alive while the tank establishes it's biological balance.

While that happens, I want to get information on which other fishes I can get, as I now know the store is not as reliable as I thought it would be.

My original population plan (that's after dropping the sexy balloon mollies for lack of decent tank size):

1 or 2 additionnal platies
1 dwarf gourami cobalt
1 honey gourami
1 apple snail
some sort of hard working shrimps? or something else like a group of 6 pygme corydoras or entlers livebearers.

I'm reading conflicting information with regards to compatibility (platies and both gouramis) as well as tank volume requirement (dwarf gourami). I also now realize that the above might be way too much for the tank I have.

Is anything obviously wrong with that plan? I welcome any stocking advice and suggestion, but keep in mind I'm new to this so would rather start with pets who don't require complex care.

Your help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Geist

[rich311k]

I would do only one gourami. The rest sounds pretty good to me. Dwarf corys would be great.

[wolf_eyes]

Hopefully your platies will make it through the cycle. If they are indeed pregnant, the stress of being in an uncycled tank plus the stress of preganancy may cause them more harm than being taken to the store.

Generally speaking, it's best to keep only 1 gourami to a tank, especially in smaller tanks. If you really want to keep the platies, I would do 3 platies, 1 gourami of your choice, and some ghost shrimp. I would also suggest getting a few more plants so that the shrimp and fish have places to hide.

[annageckos]

Apple snails do better in unheated tanks. Also, if you do not know what to look for you may end up with the species that eats plants. Pomacea canaliculata, called Cana snails, apple snails and mystery snails eat plants, they also get very large and make a lot of waste. P.Bridgessii/Diffusa (Diffusa is the new name, but some still use the old name) aka Briggs, apple snail and mystery snail are safe to keep with plants and do not get as large, but they still produce a lot of waste. They are hard to tell apart. You could get a nerite snail, they can not breed in freshwater and are plant safe.

[Geist]

All is doing ok on day 5, I'm testing for ammonia and nitrite twice a day and doing 25% water changes once a day.

The platies are doing well as far as I can tell. They swim around exploring, calmly but actively.

Thanks for the advice on gouramis and snails. I've looked the nerite up online and they seem to be common enough for me to find them easily. I'll definately get more plant, I want to see how the ones I have do with my lighting first though. If after a while they are not doing so great, I'll know to get a new tube before getting more plants.

I'll look at the shrimps they have at the store, and will also look up dwarf corys.

Thanks again for your help!

Geist