Hello all,
Thankyou for the great responses to our last post (especiallly nick and Savage roo...thanks for the great info guys). We have decided to go with a combination of cichlids, clown loaches and BN's.
The questions we have are,
With 2 loaches and 2 BN's how many african cichlids would go in a 3 ft tank?
Can gouramis and neon tetras go in with the cichlids?
Should we buy water hardness and nitrite test kits (if so what are good ones) and how often should we test such levels?
Should we put the crushed coral stuff in the bottom of the tank or can we put pebbles or a combination of the 2?
Sorry if these questions have been asked before, but i could not find the info i was looking for and the web stuff was just too confusing
Thankyou
Josh and Kylie
Hey... well with cichlids most will eat ya neons.. so not a good idea to have them in the tank... i dont think gourami's can go with cichlids they like diff water types ..cichlids like a high ph... i have peppermints BN cat fish in with my cichlids so i cant see why your bn cant.
Umm we have white quartz in the bottom of our tank that.. rasies the ph level
Which cichlids are you talking about? American or African.
As for White Quartz raising your ph i disagree, substrait is only a buffer it will not raise ph and depending which cichlid you go for determines on the application of substrait. and neon's will go with dwarf gouramis
And for the Quantity it depends on type cichlid or fish and filtration
Just thought I would let you know I have 3 gourami's in my cichlid tank along with clown and yoyo loaches and a B/N. I keep the water neutral any they are all happy. My cichlid's have even breed
Definitely dont put neons in with the Ciclids, the others are okay. You can mix a bit of Crushed Coral with your gravel as a buffer.
I wouldnt worry too much about a hardness kit at this stage, just an Ammonia or Nitrite will suffice, and maybe a Ph kit.
Ammonia and Nitrite are the biggest killers for people just starting out, so learn a bit about those, also do a search on the water cycle.
If you can keep water you can keep fish.
Unfortunately we dont have a section here for newbies, so you can do a search on this site or on the net.
Theo
Neons = Expensive feeders
When I started out many years ago I found out the hard way.
Poor little buggers were missing 1/3 of their bodies.
Mitch