Stocking help! (75g)
 

I'm looking to stock my just set up 75 gallon tank and have been looking at different fish to put in it. I am planning on doing live plants which I will be buying to plant Wednesday and was wondering which plants would be good in such a large tank. Looking for something that will be dense for portions of it and a good floating plant too. Anyways, the fish I have been thinking about are:

Neon Tetra
Bolivian Ram
Turquoise Rainbowfish
Silver Hatchets
and some type of Corydoba.

My measured tap water and tank pH is 7.4 and I think the temperature needs to be around 77 for this combination? Any advice on my fish selections or criticism and good easy plant choices would be great!

Also, I'm not sure which fish to put in first since I'm just putting plants in and doing "plant cycling" with my live ones... maybe just the tetras for a while til things settle down?

Thanks everyone! I know it's a lot of questions....

Anybody?

Take it slow.
 

First let me say welcome to TFK!

Good floating plants are usually something like Pennywort, Water Sprite, Wisteria even. Those have worked well for me.

Anubias serves as a good slow growth plant for a midgrown corner plant.

A main foreground plant you could pick a sword or crypt or some kind.

For background an Onion plant or Corkcrew Vallis would do well. Maybe even some Hairgrass. If you like Driftwood you could always get moss to attach to that.


Those fish sound great together. I have neons, bolivian and corys in my 29.
Termato.Net

I would say you should have like 30+ Neon tetras because they look beautiful in HUGE schools
3-4 Bolivian Rams

and the rest you can decide based on stocking choice. That's my opinion.

I keep my tank between 77-78 degrees. Don't let it get above 80 because the Bolivian will not like it at all.

Do you have another tank set up that you can seed this tank with?
This is important and can save you a lot of time.

First I would put in the Neons. Get like 10-15 of them to initially get it going . THen you can go back and add another 10 (don't do more than 10 at once just to not throw the balance off. Some people might suggest less but I think 10 in a 75 is fine. 15 to start out with is fine i think too).

I would add 15 Neon Tetras. Cycle the tank. Once stable (you read 0 Ammonia and 0 Nitrite for 2 days) add 10 neons a week until you hit the # of neons u want.

Then add the corys.

Then the hatchets

THe last fish to go in are the Rainbowfish and then the Bolivian Rams.

Although the guide says this about neons: Care Level: Easy. Does well in a slightly more narrow range of water parameters and shouldn't be used to cycle an aquarium.

Read more: Neon Tetra (Paracheirodon innesi) Profile

I think that out of all the fish you picked the neons will be easiest to cycle with as you can keep track of them easier and their small. Also if you don't have too many and plants it shouldn't be a problem...and if u keep up with water changes.

If you just do 10-15 in a 75 gallon you should be fine. Ofc assuming plants as you are getting.

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Before you do anything, let us know if you have another tank set up.

Do you have any water testing kits?

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In all honesty cycling the tank with the neons wont be good for them. You might not be thinking about it now but those fish will have problems because Ammonia and Nitrite are toxic to them.

I fish in cycled 1/2 my tanks before I learned and my fish are still paying for it with poor immune system. My water is now clear and perfect but the fish had the damage done to them.

You can always cycle a tank first and then put the fish in. You could always but that start up bacteria stuff.

The easiest most inexpensive way to cycle a tank is to have an already established tank. Take ornaments, wood, rocks, some gravel, some sand, and the filter from that tank and put it in new tank. It will seed it with bacteria jump starting your cycle. I cycled my 5 gallon betta tank in 3 days this way.

I got caught up in all the other information I almost forgot the one of the most important things.

Do you know your water hardness. gH? kH?

This will tell you more about compatibility with these fish. Along with pH this is important.

Do you use well water or tap water. If tap water, you can find this information out online if you live in a big city or not a small town. They put it in the water report.

If not you can get a LFS store to test the water for you. You could even call the water department to ask them what the hardness is.

Here is a great article with all the information you need on Hardness, how to get the numbers and what they mean.

I would read this article: http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/f...quarium-73276/

This article on cycling may also be very helpful to you. It was very informative to me:
http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/f...m-cycle-38617/

This is another article also on Stocking your tank. This may be helpful as well:
http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/f...tocking-38626/

Thanks for the reply! That all is very helpful information and just what I was trying to figure out... for my responses to the questions above:

I don't have a tank to seed mine with, but i may be able to get something from a cousin who has a 75g up and running for some months now.

I use tap water and know the pH is about 7.2-7.4... my general hardness I'm not sure of at the moment and i don't have a test for that in my API master test kit but I'll look and see if i can't figure that out from a website for my area or something like that.

Those articles I've read a couple times and I decided on plants since it should be nicer to the fish that go in it since (with enough plants) the toxins should mostly be soaked up by my plants. If this will be a process that is too hard on my neons, let me know and i'll look out for a more hardy fish to cycle the tank with.

Also, a point i thought of but don't know the answer to, how will my plants eat til there is ammonia released into the water by my fish waste? Does fertilizer do this for them or do they require it as soon as they are placed in the tank? Don't want to kill my plants off by not having enough nutrients for them too...

Thanks so much!

Actually, been thinking about the seed tank, I have a 700 gallon pond with plants and Koi out back with some rocks i could take out of it. Think this would be fine to seed my tank with?

Also, from my water source I found this information on water hardness:
Water treated by Newport News Waterworks is considered moderately soft (4-6 grains which is equal to
70-120 mg/L as calcium carbonate or CaCO3).

That would really be beneficial and save you alot of trouble. IF you can get a rock, wood and some gravel that would be enough to kick start it.

I nice sock full of substrate should work.

You pH level is perfect. That is exactly my pH.

I you can't find that info online. Ask your local fish store. If they can't tell you should try to call the water company and see what they say before considering going out to buy a test kit. You wont be changing the hardness so no need to go waste money.

If you seed with the tank with your cousins bacteria, add plants and don't have more than 15 neons you should be fine I think. Just don't put more than 15 in there. If you want to play it safe get like 10...but i dunno if they will produce enough ammonia or not I have not dealt with something as big as a 75 yet.

If you keep ammonia under 1ppm and Nitrite under .5ppm then the neons should not have a problem. Just do water changes to keep everything in check.

Do you have a water conditioner yet?
If not I HIGHLY recommend Seachem Prime as it is very potent and actually works to detoxify nitrite for 12 hours and it converts ammonia to ammonium.

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Just Note: With any fish in cycle you cannot be surprised if one of your fish does get sick and dies. The best you can do if you choose to go this route it to keep up with the water changes.

Because you have the option to seed the tank, you could try to do a fishless cycle with the seeded medium and feed the tank fish food for ammonia. That would be the safest bet.

Fish create ammonia just by breathing so it wont take just the waste to produce ammonia.

I don't really know too much on putting plants in without fish, but the fish will produce ammonia the second they go into the tank. All my plants I put in when I started my tanks did fine because of this.

I think that will be perfect to seed the tank. How long has the pond been set up?

70-120 mg/L = aproximately 70-120ppm so

4 - 8 dGH 70 - 140 ppm soft

Read more: http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/f...#ixzz1uyCmDJSA

This is good for Corys and the Bolivian Ram. Actually its great for all your fish.

You know what you could throw in that mixture of yours. A Bristlenose Pleco.

That would top it off nicely.

I think with that you are set :)

I must throw out a caution here on this seeding of bacteria. Using anything from an outdoor pond is dangerous, it could contain any number of foreign pathogens you do not want in an indoor aquarium.

Similarly, I would not use anything from someone else's aquarium; it may look healthy, but the fish can carry several pathogens and protozoans without themselves showing it, and it will infect your aquarium.

Seeding from your own tank if you had one running is usually OK, but never someone else's.

As you intend live plants, this will not be necessary anyway. The plants need nitrogen, and they prefer it as ammonium which they get from the ammonia produced by fish and bacteria. With sufficient fast-growing plants--and floating are ideal for this--and a few small fish, there will be no discernible "cycle" to worry about.

Byron.