Stowers74's 40 Gallon Build.

Actually, I lied, I had a huge nitrite spike today lol

 

So, finding a stock that won't be pestered too much by these giant danios is proving to be fairly difficult. Also, finding two more giants is nearly impossible. My lfs said they won't be stocking any for at least a few months. Petco and Petsmart don't have any either. I noticed that my local walmart had a tag up for them, but I didn't see any (I was desperate so I looked at walmart lol). I found a site that sells them for ~$2 a piece, but I'm not sure if it's worth buying $4 worth of fish and paying $40+ in shipping lol. Any suggestions on what I could stock with them? I am definitely buying 6 Cory Cats of some sort. In another thread somebody suggested having a betta sorority (prior to me buying the giant danios), and I love that idea, but would the danios terrorize the bettas?

 

FINALLY found danios. I guess Petsmart got them in stock since my last visit. I also bought a Tequila Sunrise male guppy, a Turquoise Male guppy, and four fancy female guppies. One of my LFS's should buy the babies from me if/when they over run my tank. They seemed fine in the bag with the danios on the way home, but as soon as I released them they decided to act like the other danios and annoy the guppies. Hopefully once they get used to each other the danios will calm down a bit. Also, my nitrites are back to zero, and my nitrates are around 10 ish. I'm going to do a WC later tonight.

 

Good luck! Congrats on the new fish!

 

Acclimating the new fish to the tank, I feel like the guppies may be difficult to take pictures of too lol. Either that, or I suck at photography.

 

Your tank looks great!

 

Thanks! All of the plants seem kind of clustered and unorganized in my opinion. When I decide to re scape it I'm going to buy specific plants and actually try to do an aqua scape lol

 

It'd probably look better that way, yes, but imo it looks good.

 

My guppies are staying in the bottom of the tank? I've always heard that they are top swimmers?? Could it be that my Danios bullied them into staying on the bottom?

Edit: a few of my females got brave and swam up and the danios chased them... but only for a second or two. They were fine until they got closer to my filter, then they swam back down. I used a bottle to sort of slow down the flow of the output, and waited a few minutes .. the other guppies came up to the top too. I'm thinking that my filter puts out too much flow? What are some other filters that won't cause such an aggressive flow? Would a cannister filter be better? Or two smaller hobs?

 

Got tired of the "quiet"flow and ordered an aqua clear 50, and aquaclear 30. I figure this will be less flow and still filter well. I'm probably going to use the 30 I'm combination with my quietflow til bb gets built up on it and then switch the 50s out.


Edit: I ordered an Ehiem cannister filter meant for a 92 gallon tank. I'm hoping the current won't be too strong, but if it is I'll try the aquaclear set up.

 

Got the ehiem 2215 in last night. I used some of the media from my Aqueon in it to speed up the bb growth. I'm also using an aquaclear 30 with the ehiem. I put some spare sponge filter over the output tube because it originally seemed to make too much of a current for my guppies, but with the sponge on it, it seems to be doing fine. Maybe the sponge will even add some bb to the tank lol

 

Surprisingly, the danios and guppies are getting along super well. After putting the ehiem in, the guppies left the bottom and started swimming in the upper and mid regions of the tank. I've actually noticed some of the females trying to school with the danios lolol

 

Currently dealing with an Ich problem due to not QT'ing the petsmart danios... temp raised to 85°. I added salt (half of what was recommended) and one of my female guppies died. I quickly did a WC and I'm now skipping the salt. Going to wait two weeks and if the danios still have ich I'll start using salt...

 

Bought what I thought was a bristle nose pleco today.. petco had it labeled as a bristlenose, but once I got it home, I looked at it and it looks like it's actually either a gold nugget or common pleco... they are like maybe an inch though. It's going into QT for at least two weeks, or until the ich is dealt with. Do you guys think this is actually a bristlenose? His colors seem to be similar to the bristle nose, but I'm not seeing any bristles lolm

 

Yes, that looks like a BN to me.

 

Ok good, I thought the colors looked right, but I just didn't see any bristles. Do they develop them as they mature?

 

If it's a male, at around 2" it will start to develop facial appendages. If it's a female, you may never see them.

 

Ok good, I thought the colors looked right, but I just didn't see any bristles. Do they develop them as they mature?

If it's a male, then yes. If it's a female, maybe.

 

So, the pleco died last night during QT...

 

So, the pleco died last night during QT...

 

I also lost the danio that had the worst of the ich... This just hasn't been my week lol. On the bright side, none of the other fish show any signs of ich.

 

I've got a chance to get a mature angelfish... My girlfriends mom works at a vet, and they have an angel in a ~29 gallon tank. It's pretty old from what they are telling me. They also said that it can be aggressive to smaller fish... I wonder if my guppies would get eaten by him lol?

 

I feel like the danios would stress it too much though. The danios have actyally calmed down a lot since I first bought them though Here's a picture:

 

So, I've added a few fish and rescaped a bit since my last post.

My stock now consists of:
5 Giant Danio (lost one when I was battling Ich)
5 guppies (two male, 3 female)
4 female bettas (so far, no nipping, but a fair ammount of flaring. I should be getting the 5th betta from aquabid later this
week)
6 Cory Cats (4 pandas, 2 jullii)
And German Blue Ram (male, I believe)

 

Tank looks nice!

 

Dude the tank looks awesome. Where could I get one of those blue rams from though Stowers74

 

I got mine from an lfs, german blur rams are extremely delicate though lol. I noticed him gasping quite a bit so I took him back to the lfs. I need to get my water parameters spot on before I try keeping them again lol

 

The first hint of nitrates or ammonia, the grI'm reaper starts texting them. That's why I don't have any. They are indeed beautiful fish though. Hope you can get yours back

 

That's a shame probably not the best for my tank being that I don't test it often XD

 

Beautiful setup. I'm thinking this is sort of the setup I'm looking for in my 55 gallon.