Fish Tank Question

I have 2 oscars in my 55 gal and pet store said I was pushing it.. Yes there 6 in long but I'd still say u have too many to get more

I used to keep freshwater stuff, now I keep a reef tank, so hopefully I haven't forgotten everything. First, that rainbow shark is going to get way to big, they need a ~100 gallon tank. glowfish are danios, not tetras. You should keep them in a bigger tank too since they are really active. Tetras and danios need to be in groups which you don't really have room for. If you want something sort of vaguely like a pleco (also will get too big), look at ottos.

you have an overstocked tank to begin with. Get rid of the platys and the shark to start with. The shark gets 4-5 inches and shouldnt be in a small ass 10 gallon. Platys need more salt in the water than most fish in order to be 100 percent healthy. I would suggest just bagging em up and seeing if you can get a credit at the local fish store for your shark and platys and swap in some tetras. Tetras are schooling fish, so you need atleast 3-5 of them for them to not be extremely skittish. I have vast vast fish knowledge and experience, so if you have any questions hit me a pm. I have kept monster fish ( stingrays, piranha, large catfish), fully planted fresh water fish tanks, and was paid professionally to maintain fish tanks for major businesses. Let me know if you have any other questions.

good advice, Im sure if he means glofish ( the genetic freakshow danios) or glolite tetras.
oto's and frogs may beef if the otos start to like the taste of the slime from frogs skin. Oto's typically keep to themselves though. If you have oto's you must have a piece of real driftwood in the tank as eventually they will die without a piece as they need softer water and need it to aid in digestion.

the platys seem to be healthy as shit they swim around and everything, so take back the shark, get 3 glofish (yes the freak show ones that are red and green and yellow), and that's it?

those glofish are not a good choice, they are not durable and die premature deaths due to inbreeding and having dye injected into them. How serious are you about keeping fish? willing to swap out 10 percent of the water every 2 weeks?

i was gonna do 20% changes every week. is that too much? i wanna keep them for a while and then maybe get a saltwater down the road. so no glofish then. what do you recommend if i just have the shrimp and the snail in the tank. I want some really badass fish. like angel fish, but those are too big i know.

thats a blue ram, you need to keep water quality fairly decent. 20 percent water every week would be plenty fine. They need softer water aswell, so you need driftwood or peatmoss in your filter to keep these little guys. Pretty amazing color if you have a male and female because the male will try to impress the female fairly often and keep an almost pure pink/purple shine on his underside.



cardinal tetras. they have very similar needs to the blue ram so they can be kept in the same tank with no issues. need to be in schools of atleast 3/5 aswell.



cockatoo cichlid.
from the same waters as the ram, so same water demands.



any of those guys look appealing?

yeah I wouldn't get glowfish personally, They're sort of genetically whacked, and I don't think they would like being in a tank of that size.

The blue ram cardinal tetra and chichlid interest me. I heard chichlid can't go with other fish though?

This thread is offensively legit. When I read the OP's questions I though that no one would have any idea what the hell he was talking about...

Touche NS, touche.

nah dude. Those cichlids i posted are dwarf cichlids, they are modest 90 percent of the time. African 'lids are extremely protective of their "personal space" and breed like crazy. Central and south american ones are normally much larger and just eat fish outright for no real reason other than to have a meal.

You can keep those rams with almost anything that wont eat the ram. Red rams are ugly as sin, make sure you look at blue rams.

having such a small tank ( 10gallon ) really really limits your options but can be a good gauge on how much you are dedicated to the hobby. In my prime I had 5 tanks rolling at once in my room.


someday you could have a killer fresh water planted tank.. much cheaper than saltwater and IMO much more easy to maintain and easier on the eyes. I Have kept every type of tank/fish in the hobby if you included all the tanks i was comissioned to maintain.

hex tanks suck ass for the most part. My first tank i ever owned was a 21 or 22 gallon hex and it drove me nuts. The silicone on the panes of glass eventually gets scummy and the tank needs a breakdown to clean it properly. If you plan to grow plants aswell, think of the additional depth on a hex tank, so you may need to up your wattage of light in order to grow some of the harder plants to maintain. Would be a nice tank if you dont plan to get too serious with it or do a badass mangrove 20 gallon hex with an archer fish. Fill the hex half way up and use a submersed powerhead to circulate water and filter, get a nice mangrove stick or real mangrove plant to grow. You could feed the archer some bugs and have a badass brackish tank. Scats/mono/ archers/ freshwater moray/ freshwater gobies. Can you understand what im trying to explain? kind of like this but not so poorly maintained.

planted tanks look badass as fuck. must be super hard though.

nah man, once you get a basic understanding of water chemisty its not bad at all. In order to get a nice planted tank like that, you can make a DIY home made co2 injection system running, and you need 3 watts of light per gallon of water. 6700k wavelength lights. The plus side of planted tanks is they greatly reduce algae production through the process of consuming the same food that algae needs to grow. If you wanted to revamp your tank into a badass planted tank, its well worth the money and time. Once a tank is established with a good garden, you can drop water changes down to once a month easy. Let me know if you need any pointers or direction on where you want to take your fish tank, id be glad to help you out man.

Thanks a lot I decided I'm gonna do 5 cardinal tetras and 2 blue rams with the shrimp and snail. I took back everything else today besides the shrimp and snail, which are still in the tank. I got the water tested and need to drop the ph and ammonia levels so I'm gonna change the water and let the tank cycle for a couple weeks to hopefully stabilize a little bit as it's a new tank. After that I'm planning on getting the tetras and then the blue rams a week after the tetras. Sound good tronned? I might do the planted or a nano reef down the road in maybe 8 months or so depending on how the fish are doing.

I am honesty shocked anyone on this sight knows anything about fish. go to aquahobby.com they will hook you up

sounds good dude. How old is the tank? its a 28 day cycle for a tank to produce a culture of ammonia eatting bacteria, so my advice to you is go snag 2 zebra danios for about 2 bucks and slap them in your tank to continue the cycle as the bacteria need ammonia (fish waste) to feed off, so by having no fish in there you will have to start your cycle over again perhaps. Your shrimp and snail most likely wont make it through the cycle, as they are pretty sensitive to ammonia and no3 and no4 which are natural to your tanks culture process. Typically you wil want to establish a tank for prob around 2 months prior to cardinal tetras as they dont like variance in water quality. I suggest to you to get some peat moss and cut your filter sponge in half and drop that bitch into the back of your filter ( assuming an aquaclear) Bag the peat in a panty hose so it doesnt get all mucky in your tank. Get a piece of real driftwood aswell, both peat and driftwood will soften your water and do wonders for plants, and the type of fish youre looking at. If you have lighting on the tank, it has to be tube lights... not lightbulbs for plants. You can start adding hardy plants after day 28, some plants are impossible to kill and greatly help control algae like mentioned before. Dont listen to pinheads at the fish store, if you have questions just let me know and ill lead you down the path to a good, easy to maintain fish tank.


also, return those danios when they finish the cycle... they are not very cool fish and can be really pushy.

Tank is 3 days old, i got the water tested today and my ph is 8.5 and ammonia is high so i got two pieces of driftwood (from the tanks in petco, been there for like 6 months they said) and have some plants in there and i will get the danios on monday and if the shrimp and snail die i can return them. and plants are cheap whatever i think i can return those too. i will do the 28 day cycle then probably put a couple shrimp and a snail back in if they die. i have one 50/50 fluorescent bulb (not tube) 10 watt and one incandescent in it right now is that enough or do i need another 50/50? how do you do the peat moss thing you were talking about? that was confusing and i have an aqueon power 10 filter. and the people at the fish store said the plants need food? they don't photosynthesize?

Yeah, 8.5 ph is pretty damn high but during the ammonia levels can influence a higher ph value so it will eventually drop lower and stabilize. Yeah, get another 50/50 bulb, incandescent bulbs are awful for everything. If you have 2 10 watt 5050 bulbs you can grow a decent amount of plants. Only certain plants need food, typically and plant with purple/red in their leaves will need iron but straight green plants normally can do without.

As for the peat moss. If you have a standard "hang on the back" style filter for your tank ( the kind that makes a little waterfall back into the tank), you can pull out the basket that has your filter sponge and charcoal and either see if you can jam some peat in there without cutting the filter in half or just cut the filter in half and jam some peat in the back of the filter. Just take the peat and wash it in the sink before hand to get all the loose dirty shit out of it then put it in a tight bag like thing like a pantyhose or cheesecloth and put it in the back of the tank. The peat/driftwood will soften your water and lower the ph at the same time. The only other option to lower PH is dumping acid into the tank, which is ok but its just one more thing to worry about so just use peat and driftwood.

In the end once the tank is fully established after 3-5 months you can have your livestock load at whatyoure hoping, but slowly add stuff, start with 3 cardinals for a week, see how they do, then add your 2 rams ( get a male and a female... otherwise if its 2 males they will fight with each other all the time). Just do baby steps into it. You can dump as many plants as you like into the tank after the first cycling period of your tank (28 days). If youre hellbent on shrimp think about some of these fellows.

Its an acrylic so I shouldn't have any problems with silicon. I don't really like them either but It was free... I've been looking at going two ways with actually, both bonsai inspired. One would be a freshwater, with a big hunk of wood covered in java moss, and fast growers in the back. The front would get some anubias, and other misc stuff. Id pump PC's over the top, and DIY CO2 supplementation.

i would get a bigger tank if i were you