I am in the process of setting up a ten gallon tank for my college dorm room. I have a bit of fishkeeping experience from middle and high school with bettas and a 30 gallon community tank, so I'm not a complete newbie, but I'm still pretty green.
For this ten gallon, I would like to try going with live plants, something I haven't done in my previous tanks. My ten gallon tank has an incandescent hood, but I've replaced the two bulbs with CFLs. Each CFL is 10 watts, 6500 Kelvin, and 550 lumens. The plants that I am interested in growing are some variety of Vallisneria, Ludwigia Repens, dwarf Sagittaria, and floating water sprite. Is my light sufficient for these plants? And will I need to fertilize them or not? Again, I have never done live plants before, so any and all advice is welcome!
Now for the fish. My biggest concern with stocking this tank is my tap water parameters. From the research I have done, it seems that most of the small fish suitable for a ten gallon tank prefer soft, acidic water. Unfortunately, I have very hard, basic water coming out of the tap. According to my city's water quality report (http://www.cityofmadison.com/water/waterQuality/documents/AnnualMonitoringReport2011.final.pdf) the parameters of my tap water are as follows.
pH: 7.8 according to the report, but testing with the API Master kit shows closer to 7.5 or 7.6
Hardness (CaCO3): 336 ppm
Alkalinity (CaCO3): 307 ppm
Total Dissolved Solids: 421 ppm
I know that most livebearers will do well in this kind of water and I am considering a small group of fancy guppies (male only, not interested in 8 trillion fry in a ten gallon tank) however I have kept most of the common livebearers (molly, guppy, swordtail, platy) at some point or another in the community tank that I used to run and was hoping to do something different with this tank. For this reason, I am considering mixing the tap water with RO water from the grocery store in order to cut down the hardness of the water and, hopefully, open up a few more options for fish. Thoughts on this matter?
Finally, after reading about many different types of fish (including using the super helpful profiles on this site!), these are some of the stocking schemes I am interested in. I don't have my heart set on anything yet and would welcome any feedback or suggestions.
One male betta
Several male fancy guppies
Trio of dwarf puffers
Female betta sorority
One male honey gourami
One male dwarf gourami (if and only if I can find a local breeder with healthy stock)
Scarlet badis
Whew! I think that's it! If you made it this far, thanks for reading my short novel, hahaha! Any thoughts, advice, and feedback are all greatly appreciated!
For this ten gallon, I would like to try going with live plants, something I haven't done in my previous tanks. My ten gallon tank has an incandescent hood, but I've replaced the two bulbs with CFLs. Each CFL is 10 watts, 6500 Kelvin, and 550 lumens. The plants that I am interested in growing are some variety of Vallisneria, Ludwigia Repens, dwarf Sagittaria, and floating water sprite. Is my light sufficient for these plants? And will I need to fertilize them or not? Again, I have never done live plants before, so any and all advice is welcome!
Now for the fish. My biggest concern with stocking this tank is my tap water parameters. From the research I have done, it seems that most of the small fish suitable for a ten gallon tank prefer soft, acidic water. Unfortunately, I have very hard, basic water coming out of the tap. According to my city's water quality report (http://www.cityofmadison.com/water/waterQuality/documents/AnnualMonitoringReport2011.final.pdf) the parameters of my tap water are as follows.
pH: 7.8 according to the report, but testing with the API Master kit shows closer to 7.5 or 7.6
Hardness (CaCO3): 336 ppm
Alkalinity (CaCO3): 307 ppm
Total Dissolved Solids: 421 ppm
I know that most livebearers will do well in this kind of water and I am considering a small group of fancy guppies (male only, not interested in 8 trillion fry in a ten gallon tank) however I have kept most of the common livebearers (molly, guppy, swordtail, platy) at some point or another in the community tank that I used to run and was hoping to do something different with this tank. For this reason, I am considering mixing the tap water with RO water from the grocery store in order to cut down the hardness of the water and, hopefully, open up a few more options for fish. Thoughts on this matter?
Finally, after reading about many different types of fish (including using the super helpful profiles on this site!), these are some of the stocking schemes I am interested in. I don't have my heart set on anything yet and would welcome any feedback or suggestions.
One male betta
Several male fancy guppies
Trio of dwarf puffers
Female betta sorority
One male honey gourami
One male dwarf gourami (if and only if I can find a local breeder with healthy stock)
Scarlet badis
Whew! I think that's it! If you made it this far, thanks for reading my short novel, hahaha! Any thoughts, advice, and feedback are all greatly appreciated!