Animal Chin
08-15-2007, 02:45 PM
Hello everyone,
I have been lurking on the forums for the past few weeks, soaking up all the information I can about freshwater aquariums and wanted to finally introduce myself.
My family and I started a 10 gallon tank about two weeks ago with two zebra danios and one yoyo loach. Those fish did great for the first 10 days, so we added two additional zebra danios and one more yoyo loach two days ago. So far, everyone seems happy and is getting along well. Our hope is to add two more zebra danios (for a total of six) and possibly another yoyo loach (although after observing the two we have now, I’m not sure there will be room for a third loach).
We decorated our tank with three small potted live plants (forget what kind), one artificial plant (which will probably be going soon as we all like the live plants a lot more than we thought we would), a stone rock formation that has two little holes for fish to swim through and a long piece of driftwood. I also upgraded the incandescent light that came with the tank (which was a “starter kit”) to a fluorescent light that the fish and the plants seem to like a lot better.
We elected to cycle the tank with fish, so I’ve been doing 25-50% water changes every other day or every third day. When we just had the three scout fish, I never got any detectable ammonia (or nitrite or nitrate), which I attributed to the small number of little fish, along with the fact that we’ve been feeding them very lightly. Now having doubled the occupancy of the tank, I’m expecting ammonia to show up any day.
I’ve been keeping the temperature of the water around 76 degrees F, which is a bit lower than most tropical tanks I’ve been reading about, but the fish book I have says the zebra danios like the temperature around 65-75 and the loaches like 75-82. So we’re trying to keep it at the high end of one fish's comfort and the low end of the other's. If I had to change that, I would increase it, as I understand that the danios are hardier and more adaptable to temperature changes.
Our hope is to maintain this tank for six months to a year, and if things go well and we still enjoy it, upgrade to a serious (50 gallon +) tank that would have dense planted (as opposed to potted) plants. But for now, we’re trying not to get ahead of ourselves and to take care of the current tank.
That’s about all I can think of. In the last month or so of getting this set up, this site has been invaluable (and the eBook has been our Bible). I hope that as I gain my own experience with aquarium keeping that I will be able to contribute as well.
Thanks,
ac
I have been lurking on the forums for the past few weeks, soaking up all the information I can about freshwater aquariums and wanted to finally introduce myself.
My family and I started a 10 gallon tank about two weeks ago with two zebra danios and one yoyo loach. Those fish did great for the first 10 days, so we added two additional zebra danios and one more yoyo loach two days ago. So far, everyone seems happy and is getting along well. Our hope is to add two more zebra danios (for a total of six) and possibly another yoyo loach (although after observing the two we have now, I’m not sure there will be room for a third loach).
We decorated our tank with three small potted live plants (forget what kind), one artificial plant (which will probably be going soon as we all like the live plants a lot more than we thought we would), a stone rock formation that has two little holes for fish to swim through and a long piece of driftwood. I also upgraded the incandescent light that came with the tank (which was a “starter kit”) to a fluorescent light that the fish and the plants seem to like a lot better.
We elected to cycle the tank with fish, so I’ve been doing 25-50% water changes every other day or every third day. When we just had the three scout fish, I never got any detectable ammonia (or nitrite or nitrate), which I attributed to the small number of little fish, along with the fact that we’ve been feeding them very lightly. Now having doubled the occupancy of the tank, I’m expecting ammonia to show up any day.
I’ve been keeping the temperature of the water around 76 degrees F, which is a bit lower than most tropical tanks I’ve been reading about, but the fish book I have says the zebra danios like the temperature around 65-75 and the loaches like 75-82. So we’re trying to keep it at the high end of one fish's comfort and the low end of the other's. If I had to change that, I would increase it, as I understand that the danios are hardier and more adaptable to temperature changes.
Our hope is to maintain this tank for six months to a year, and if things go well and we still enjoy it, upgrade to a serious (50 gallon +) tank that would have dense planted (as opposed to potted) plants. But for now, we’re trying not to get ahead of ourselves and to take care of the current tank.
That’s about all I can think of. In the last month or so of getting this set up, this site has been invaluable (and the eBook has been our Bible). I hope that as I gain my own experience with aquarium keeping that I will be able to contribute as well.
Thanks,
ac