Need help with my First Planted Tank

Hi! I'm setting up my first aquarium, I studied and researched a lot but I still have several questions, I would be very grateful if a more experienced aquarist could clarify some of them.

My aquarium is 60 liters (60x30x33), I intend to put a shoal of ember tetra, four Otocinclus and some neocaridin shrimp.

The aquarium will be heavy planted, but at the beginning I will only use one pot of each plant that I will plant (about 8 species, easy to medium), I will not use CO2 at the beginning, but in the future I may use it. My substrate is aquasoil.

For Hardscape I have some driftwood and some rocks (I found these rocks are alkaline)

the pH of my tap water is around 6.5, Gh is very low and kh is very low (in the tests both change color after the first drop of the reagent)

I have a 60 cm Chihiros luminaire, the filter is a Sunsun canister with 2.4 l of ceramic.

My doubts are:

• For this aquarium I would need to keep the PH around 7, gh around 6 and kh around 4, correct? Shrimp are the most demanding of the fauna that I will put, right?
• Should I use the stones in the aquarium or not, I'll put the link to an image of them, here they are sold as Black Rocks and the seller says that the PH is around 7.3, will these rocks alkalize the water too much?

• I need to increase the KH using sodium bicarbonate, right?
• Are these rocks enough to raise the GH to 6 or do I need to use some product like equilibrium? Ah, I have 3 kg of this rock here, I have 5 kg of Aquasoil too, which acidifies.
• What is the order to adjust the water parameters? Would it be KH, GH and ai PH?
• Should I change the water 50% every three days in the first month and then 50% every week? I saw that this prevents algae growth while the plants are adapting.

I know that because it is chemistry it is very difficult for you to give me an exact answer, there are many variables. But what would be the correct procedure? Would this be?
1 - Place the Hardscape
2 - Plant the plants
3 - Use water prime, put it in the aquarium and do the PH, KH and GH tests, write it down.
4 - 3 days later, redo the tests to see what has changed and perform a 50% water change.
5 - Redo the tests and note the changes
6 - If GH and KH have not increased enough, start using bicarbonate and equilibrium.
7 - Repeat this every two water changes and take notes, dosing bicarbonate and equilibrium until the parameters are maintained.
8 - After 1 month change the frequency of exchange to 50% 1x a week.
9 - Introduce the animals little by little.

Is this correct? Oh, I didn't mention it but I know that I need to put the prime in the exchange water too.

I know that some doubts may seem basic, but as it is my first aquarium I want to have as much information as possible before introducing the fauna and flora.

Thanks!

 

Hi ectpistes

Welcome to fishlore.
I am sorry you have waited 11 hours for a reply.
I don’t consider myself a plant person and definitely not an expert at anything. I offer advice based on my experience and talking with my local aquarium clubs.

You have two things to learn ahead of you and seem to have them in the wrong order. Please take what I say in the spirit I offer it and don’t take offence.

What is often said by local club members that have worked in shops and quote newbies.

” my fish don’t die anymore so I want some plants now”

What I am saying is get a feel for keeping fish first before you jump into a fully planted tank.
Start by learning the routine of weekly water changes. With random extra water changes anytime you want. In the beginning we all make mistakes. Learn that the fishes needs are the most important thing what we want to look at comes second. Learn how to make a couple of species happy with the caves , substrate, overhead cover , or just open space to themselves. Each species has its own demands.

My suggestion is to start with plants glued on to wood and rock ( Anubis, Java fern) Have a few floating plants like hornwort frogbit. Then move to stem plants that are planted in pots. All of the above mentioned plants can be removed from a tank to clean and remove algae.

In six or twelve months you can consider an active substrate and more advanced plants.

You may even find as I did that the fish became so important I lost interest ( temporarily) in planted tanks. My path lead to breeding fish as that is basically what fish want to do when wet.

Plants like moss and guppy grass although extremely easy to grow are what my fish want to have for their young.The human may want red and pink plants?
Anyway enough of my rambling?
To answer some of your questions and unfortunately spell out a few things about 60 litre tanks.

The 60 litre /15 gallon tank is not a suitable home for ottos.They require algae to eat. Many never learn to eat man made food. The tank is not big enough to grow the algae required for even one Otto. As you are probably aware they last longer when kept in a group.

Ember tetras and cherry shrimp.
A great combination .
Wait until you find a good colour of shrimp before you buy because all the offspring will come from whatever colour you first buy. Pay a bit more to get a slightly better/ stronger colour. You only need buy 8 to get 6 to survive and breed into a few hundred in the 60 litre. By the time you have a few hundred they will do the job you had in mind for the Otto anyway.

Ember tetra will not breed successfully without you working hard at the job. They will however spawn daily if happy. Then eat their eggs daily. Buy 20 maybe? Certainly 15 is a good size school. Don’t buy 6 as the internet might say.

doubts

x1
LEAVE the PH alone . Work with what you have. A PH of 6.5 is close enough to 7 for most aquarium born fish. Stable is the key.
The GH is fine for soft water species like you are thinking of.
The KH may be an issue but regardless of what the internet tells you it may be no problem at all.
Basically run the tank and find out.

#2
Rock the change PH.
See the statement above . Stable is the key.
I would not use them inside the aquarium. At least not for first 12 months. You may have only wasted a bit of money?

Equilibrium,
You may not need this at all. If you do decide to use a little you will be adding exactly the same amount to every bucket of change water. You can slowly increase the amount or slowly add less and less until you are adding none.

What order to adjust water parameters.
Don’t change your tap water and see how the soft water fish survive. If and only if you have issues consider messing with the GH . KH.
Do not mess with the PH just because you read a book that said you could.
You can not have African cichlids and probably can’t have guppies in your water without adding minerals/ equilibrium.

Changing water.
You need to learn how the nitrogen cycle works.
We change water to remove the final waste product of the beneficial bacteria ,nitrates . We change water depending on the number of fish. We remove nitrates . Yes when fully cycled it’s likely to be 50% every week. Study the nitrogen cycle for more information on this subject.

correct procedure.
Learn how to keep fish alive. With or without basis plants. Then move one to more demanding plants.

I can see reading your post you have given this a lot of research already. Thats great , you may be overthinking it?
Small steps in my suggestion.
You may find it hard going if you try and do everything at once?
You may even find a new direction other than a planted tank once you have fish swimming in water.

Sorry I know this is a long reply but you wrote a lot of questions.

An old snapshot of a tank that every plant is in a container or planted on wood . Everything in this tank can be removed in 5 minutes.

 

Lots of good advice from flyfisha. I ditto on the work with what the water is. The biggest challenge for any tank is trying to keep water that is not the same as what comes out of the tap. This is the key reason why marine tanks and rift cichlids are so hard.

What does leap out at me is that you have both kh and gh low. This almost certainly means that the buffering ability of the water is low. In other words as fish waste builds up you will have a higher chance of the ph collapsing. I would watch ph as a possible problem area. A ph collapse will mean you will lose fish.

In a previous life I used sodium bicarb as a buffering agent - look it up but from memory it will keep ph around 7.6. The alternatives are coral or other calcium based items in your filter or a commercial buffer. I use seachem neutral 7.0 to lock my ph to 7.0 because I also have low kh and gh. Nowadays you can pretty much select the ph you want and then buffer to it. The only downside apart from fiddling around and cost is that buffer powders - some anyway - will add phosphate which in turn may make the algae problem harder.

hth

paul

 

Hi! I'm setting up my first aquarium, I studied and researched a lot but I still have several questions, I would be very grateful if a more experienced aquarist could clarify some of them.

My aquarium is 60 liters (60x30x33), I intend to put a shoal of ember tetra, four Otocinclus and some neocaridin shrimp.

The aquarium will be heavy planted, but at the beginning I will only use one pot of each plant that I will plant (about 8 species, easy to medium), I will not use CO2 at the beginning, but in the future I may use it. My substrate is aquasoil.

For Hardscape I have some driftwood and some rocks (I found these rocks are alkaline)

the pH of my tap water is around 6.5, Gh is very low and kh is very low (in the tests both change color after the first drop of the reagent)

Hi ectopistes and welcome to Fishlore!

Fauna

• For a 60 liter tank withEmber Tetras would be perfect! You may even consider other small tetras like Neons.
• I would suggest Panda Corys. Otos are a little "iffy" for 60 liters because they really like to swim around. The tank should be well established before adding these guys, so if you do decide to try them they definitely need something to eat.
• Shrimp - I have no experience with.

Plants
I am a firm believer in planted tanks! The more plants the better in my opinion. The fish seem to live longer and healthier lives. I'm including a link to a list of Low Light plants here:
Excellent List Of Plants For Low Light Tanks
But, feel free to experiment with other plant species and see what works best for you!

CO2
I am including a link to a ph/kh table. Just take your KH value and follow to the right to find your "optimal" window for CO2. This window is the green shaded area and the numerical values within each cell are CO2 parts per million (ppm). The optimal window is "roughly" 15-30 ppm (varies slightly) for each value of KH with 15ppm on the low side and 30ppm on the high side.
CO2/pH/KH table

To check CO2 levels, I use a drop checker with 4dKH solution. 4dKH solution gives the most accurate CO2 level indication.
https://www.amazon.com/Rhinox-pre-M...sprefix=drop+checker+with+4dkh,aps,122&sr=8-3

Hardscape
I would definitely add driftwood, but I would not worry too much about making the water alkaline. Tetras love soft, acidic water. You can have a really nice Amazon Biotope!

NOTE: I wish I had your water parameters! My tap is like 8.5 pH and the hardness is off the chart. Liquid rock!

 

Welcome to the forum. You said you want to keep neocaridina shrimp, but with you water I believe you may have better luck with caridinas.