New to hobby with a tank plan

Hello all, this is my first post here.

I have recently decided that I want to jump into this hobby. My grandmother used to keep fish and I remembered I loved helping her do all the fish chores, but that was about 20 years ago. What recently spurred my interest is that i'm learning a bit more about ecology and biology and I want to watch it more on a small scale. To that end, I want to make a planted aquarium with live plants, fish, invertebrates, etc, and I want to keep it relatively simple. I'd like to go with an "Amazon" theme, but am not married to the purity of the idea. It makes sense to me that a planted tank could be lower maintenance which would be nice, but maintenance and work won't scare me off.

I am a rather advanced hobbyist (my garage is a functioning nanobrewery) and I work as a geochemist, so I do know all about the nitrogen cycle.

I wrote up a tank plan for this project, and I just wanted to post it here to solicit some feedback.

I bought a Fluval Flex 15 gallon tank to make my aquarium in. I also picked up a 4kg back of the Fluval Stratum substrate. I have a lot of cool rocks and gravel that I will aquascape with most of which are silicates so should be fairly inert, but I would like to put one larger limestone rock in to supply calcium needs and because it looks cool. I also need to either find or maybe buy a good piece of driftwood. I will thoroughly boil everything that will go in the tank, and I might rinse with phosphoric acid to further kill microbes and molds followed be a DI water rinse. Here is the rest of my plan as is:

1. Gather supplies: tank, heater, filter, substrate materials, light, etc. (I think I have everything I need except plants at this point).
2. Plan, sketch, test, arrange and aquascape tank.

3. Plant aquatic plants and seeds. I am not yet sure what plants I will go with, but I am thinking: Amazon swords, Crypts, and dwarf hair-grass or baby-tears. Here, I am planning on doing a dry-start with the substrate wet but plants not fully submerged. I might add CO2 at this point to help the plants grow. I already have a large CO2 tank on a manifold in my garage, so I could just use that depending on temperatures out there. I could add starting cultures of beneficial bacteria at this time with a few inches of water, or I could wait until I add the majority of the water. I am planning on letting the plants get established before submerging for 1-2 months.

4. Once i'm happy with plant growth and the way things are looking, I will add water to submerge the tank. I'll probably wait a week or two after that as well to let things stabilize. I will also test water parameters.

5. Add invertebrates. I might start with some brine shrimp, but ultimately i'd like to have some kind of freshwater shrimp in there, so would it make sense to add them first? I'm thinking about 10 cherry shirmp or something similar. I'd also like to add some Nerite snails. and if those guys do well,

6. Add live fish. I would like to have a school of 6-10 Neon Tetras as the main species. Additionally, i'm thinking two Cory Catfish, and maybe two or three KuhlI Loach just because they're cool.

So that's my master plan so far. I have been doing research into this and it seems reasonable to me, but as a n00b I want to get some feedback from people who actually know what they're doing. I will ask more specific questions if different threads, but I wanted to introduce myself and my plan here first.

Thanks for any and all advice and suggestions you can give me!

 

#5) I'm not 100% sure on the shrimp, but nerites need to be in a pretty established tank. As they generally don't eat regular fish foods. Explain the brine shrimp concept.

 

#5) I'm not 100% sure on the shrimp, but nerites need to be in a pretty established tank. As they generally don't eat regular fish foods. Explain the brine shrimp concept.

Ok, I will hold off on the Nerite snails. The idea with brine shirmp is that they are fairly hardy critters and will show that the tank is ready for life. When I add fish, there will be a bunch of live food for them already. That's the idea.

 

Ok, I will hold off on the Nerite snails. The idea with brine shirmp is that they are fairly hardy critters and will show that the tank is ready for life. When I add fish, there will be a bunch of live food for them already. That's the idea.

I thought brine shrimp only lived a day or 2? Plus I thought they hatch in brackish water?

 

I thought brine shrimp only lived a day or 2? Plus I thought they hatch in brackish water?

They can live longer in salt water. In fresh, a few houts at most. You are correct.

 

Cories need to be in a shoal of 5 or more per species.
Kuhlie loaches need to be in a shoal as well, the bare minimum is 5. but you will likly never see then if you only keep 5. you should really have 8 or more.
Nerite snails are the one type of snail that won't eat your plants. but the also may not eat store bought foods. you should wait until you have some algae growth before getting them.

 

Welcome.

In my experience, aquatic plants grown emersed will generally melt back after they are immersed. New leaves will grow fairly quickly but I wouldn't recommend spending too much time growing plants out of water only to have most of the leave melt away once the tank is filled. The leaves also often have a different appearance/shape when they grow out of the water compared to when grown immersed.

I don't have much experience with shrimp, but my understanding is that they do better if introduced only once the aquarium has matured. I would consider adding them last.

 

Welcome back to the hobby.

I like your ideas, and obviously folks with incredible experience have chimed in.

I just thought I’d add.. that with the fluval 15 you’ve already got a pretty solid startup tank there. Just in reading through your plan, I thought.. it doesn’t need to be so complicated.

Unless you go for some ridiculous moss structure or super unique plants the co2 is not needed in that small tank and can very easily go awry.

Don’t think you need to clean any of that with phosphoric acid. But to each their own.

And the plants will melt no matter what going from partially submerged to fully. Better to just purchase them from a shop that’s grown them submerged if you want to avoid the inevitable die back melt and regrowth period.

Many of the standard plants can grow well in a very short period of time. Months of plant only tank setup is.. cool if you like watching the plants. But not really necessary...

These are my fully planted fluval 9 & 15, with fish, no co2, no special submerging plan, minimal fertilizer, gravel and some sand.

 

I'll second the motion on the plants, whatever growth you get with just the roots in water will melt back once fully submerged, co2 will be of little use till you get the plants fully submerged too.
Be carefull using any limestone or similar desolving rock, you cannot control the rate they desolve and can throw your water parrameters way off.

Lots of types of kuhlie loaches eat snails and will make sharp work of your nerites.
Brine shrimp will not grow in freshwater and will only last a few hours, even if they did they are very small much less than 1cm when fully grown so you would not see them.

 

Ok, thanks for the comments everyone. I'll nix the ideas of the brine shirmp and kuhlie loaches, they weren't the main focus anyway.

I was going to do the dry start because I was planning on growing some grass and or baby-tear groundcover plants from seeds. Would those still germinate and take root if I buried them in the substrate and immediately submerged?

 

They should take root and any growth that's under water should be fine. Most coverplants need a lot of light as well as nutrition and do better with co2 but you'll need warer in for that.

 

Lots of types of kuhlie loaches eat snails and will make sharp work of your nerites.

KuhlI loaches don’t eat snails, I’ve kept mine with various snail types and nothing has ever happened...
In my experience kuhlI loaches wouldn’t even eat the snail unless it was already dead for some unrelated reason.

 

KuhlI loaches are carnivores and that means they prefer meat to veg(like me)and will eat most anything meaty, that means small invertebrates, shrimp, snails and anything else they can find. Their noses are shaped specifically to get into shrimp and snail shell, the fact that you have not had problems does not mean they are snail or shrimp safe. Bettas are suposedly shrimp safe but once the start they will ckean out a tank, just look through the forum at the amount of threads there are on the topic. Its always better to be safer than sorry.

 

KuhlI loaches are carnivores and that means they prefer meat to veg(like me)and will eat most anything meaty, that means small invertebrates, shrimp, snails and anything else they can find. Their noses are shaped specifically to get into shrimp and snail shell, the fact that you have not had problems does not mean they are snail or shrimp safe. Bettas are suposedly shrimp safe but once the start they will ckean out a tank, just look through the forum at the amount of threads there are on the topic. Its always better to be safer than sorry.

I’m very aware of there requirements, and I know they do not eat snails, I don’t know if they eat shrimp but unless someone is starving them they shouldn’t eat snails. Bettas are a hit or miss AND a completely different topic that has been an on going thing for many years, unlike kuhlI loaches eating snails....If you found they ate your snails then I would suggest checking for any copper in your water as that may have made them (snails) die, causing the kuhlI loaches to eat them. I won’t deny they will eat anything that’s dead but they certainly won’t eat any living snails, maybe shrimp but I’m not sure on that one.
And1129 I would suggest doing more research on this topic, it’s your decision and if you do decide they are snail safe then I would highly recommend them for your tank , they are a very fun and personable fish to have