55 Gallon Tank Yes another suggestions stocking 55 gallon

[DonBaldy]

I've been reading and reading and googling and googling for weeks until my head is spinning. I'm wanting to do a South American theme as I will be tranferring 2 electric blue baloon belly rams from the 20 where they currently reside. They are both still only an inch long.

I'm seeking advice on everything. Tankmates, plants and substrate. Filter will be Fluval FX2 and I'm not opposed to adding more filtration.

I do like corys. The sterbai corys look cool.

What else and how many?

Thank you for all help.

 

[Noroomforshoe]

A school of maybe 8 pictus? A school of maybe 15 hatchet fish?
What is you gh and ph? You need to know before choosing fish!

 

[DonBaldy]

A school of maybe 8 pictus? A school of maybe 15 hatchet fish?
What is you gh and ph? You need to know before choosing fish!

Right now both are nada and the tank is still in the box in the garage. I know out of the tap out water is faitly hard, but can these parameters be adjusted to get what you need for the fish?

The pictus look cool, but from a quick search it seems as though they may get a but large for a 55. The hatchets, however has potential. Thanks.

 

[Fishfur]

Right now both are nada and the tank is still in the box in the garage. I know out of the tap out water is faitly hard, but can these parameters be adjusted to get what you need for the fish?

The pictus look cool, but from a quick search it seems as though they may get a but large for a 55. The hatchets, however has potential. Thanks.

Tap water parameters can be adjusted though not necessarily with great ease.

It is much easier to add things than it is to subtract them - in other words, it’s easy to make soft water harder or raise pH, not so easy to reduce GH or pH.

Raising values involves adding GH boosters or pH/KH boosters to the water but these additives aren’t horribly expensive and there are pretty cheap alternatives if you don’t mind buying the necessary salts in bulk.

But the only practical way to make hard water softer is to dilute it with RO/DI ( reverse osmosis filtered or distilled-deionized) or possibly with collected rainwater.

It’s perfectly doable but depending on tank size it may entail quite a lot of hefty lifting & lugging of jugs of water from a store or buying an RO system. So it entails an ongoing expense - though how much is impossible to say without knowing the applicable variables.