farside

I'm finaly giving up on my malawi's, Geting rid of all the set ups and keeping just my small grow out tank which is a Juwel RIO 125, I'll be keeping it in my living room so i have decided to have a species only tank, neon tetras to be exact as they look really nice,

So after i change my substrate and pH levels then how many tetras can i keep in the tank? Here are the tank specs:

125 litres / 27.5 uk gallons or 33 US gallons.

Tank sizes: 81 x 36 x 50 cm

Also what type of plants would you add? I will be taking out all my rocks as i have been keeping mbuna fry in there so now i'll add some plants and a bit of bogwood to help lower the pH as it is quite high due to keeping malawi's. I'm also going to take out the sand substate and put in black gravel.

Lucy

Welcome to Fish Lore
A tank full of neons will be an awesome tank. One of the mods, Shawnie always says she wants a tank full. lol
I'd say you can go anywhere from 22 to 25.

Hope you post some pics when it's up and running.

Shawnie

welcome to fishlore!!!

whahooooooo thats my dream tank with it being heavily planted....I have a 20 gal going now but id love a 55 gal with just those amazing fish...(my kids say im a dork LOL)

I have floating plants (those that you see in all the pet stores dont know the name) anubias, java fern, java moss, and something that was called an aquatic fern (they probably didnt know what it was) ...Im hoping to find some aquatic hair grass but havent had luck yet....share pics when you can

farside

Ok i will once i get everything changed over, Here's a pic of my current 5ft 450 litre tank full of malawi's:



Wouldn't that look good full of neon tetras haha.



Here's my 125 litre grow out tank which i will transfer over to neon tetra:







I'll post a "after" pic below within the next few weeks:

Shawnie

pics arent working for me

farside

How about now? click on them to make them bigger

Lucy

I can see the pics.
The tanks look good.

Shawnie

there fine now! and amazing...that 450 planted with neons would be totally amazing to me!!

Tony G.

it would be such a cool thing to see! imagine just a HUGE cloud of Neons swimming in the same direction.... ahhh dare to dream

Fish_wise_man

So if you are wondering HOW many NEONS and/or CARDINAL Tetras you can fit into a 33 US gallons tank, then I would go with from 25-30. It seems reasonable to me mainly because I have that many in my 33 gallon already, but if you are a beginner then I wouldn't recommend you to put in that many. I put in that many because I do a lot of aquarium maintenance mainly every half a week (3.5 days) I guess you could say that :P

So if you are just starting to begin with neons and cardinals, then you can start with 15-20. It is what I started off with when I first started raising cardinals. The local pet store had like deals. Like 12 for so many ¥ so it was a great deal for me Although I just moved back to Japan again from Canada, and then I just did a new restart for my tank that I bought and then I just started fresh, and within a few days (I used RO water) the tank was ready. Heated, filtered, and plants already inhabited it.

Cardinals have more of a better chance of surviving. Mainly because the survival rate of Cardinal tetras are higher than the Neons. Why? It's because I hear that they are more immune to fish diseases than many other fishes. The hardiest of them all I believe is the Common pleco in the Western World. The hardiest fish in the Eastern World (China, Africa, india, Japan) could be the African Cichlids of Lake Malawi.

Although I haven't raised African Cichlids a lot. I just put them in my 10 gallon tank when they were small babies, and then I let them grow up, and then my friend took them and added them to his 2,500 US gallon tank fulll of large cichlids. But I never see him anymore so I can't tell you much more

Just on the phone xD

So anyways. If you like Neons then sure! You can go with neon tetras, but if you go with neons, then try to keep the water sparkling clean. like at least siphon the tank once a week. I do more than that but that's just me. Everyone has different methods of tank maintenance. Also, Cardinal tetras are more hardier, but they still like clean water too!

If you want to know what types of fishes can be adaptable with these cardinals and neons, then the types are:

Other community tetras, and angels (if introduced after ALL of your other fishes have been chosen) because angelfish when introduced first will claim their territory in the entire tank, and then they will give a hard time to the newcomer fishes.

farside

So here we go, so far, I decided to go for a 4ft tank instead of using my Rio 125 litre tank, Approx 240-250 litres. I just need to cycle it, I added 50% of my 5ft established tank water into it and also added some API stress zyme bacteria boost to help things along.

Here's how it looks so far:








I shall put 30 neon tetra's in this tank.

ABCDemily

Brilliant! I'd stop using stress zyme, it doesn't contain the right kind of bacteria. I'd go for TSS and add ten neons with the TSS. I'[d also hang some pantyhose full of substrate for other tanks, it's got more yummy bacteria.

farside

Yeah i figured that out after i had already put the api stress zyme bacteria boost in lol. So the day after i added some tetra safestart haha.