Hello Everyone!

[MattMal88]

Hello,
My names Matt and I'm from Philadelphia. I just started my first aquarium a few months ago and have been getting advice from this site for a few weeks now via reading the forums. I have a 30 gallon bow front tank that's moderately planted with both real and fake plants. I have several cichlids in this tank including a king kong parrot that's 4 inches or so. The rest are juveniles all around and inch and half to 2 inches that include an electric blue acara, yellow lab, orange zebra, blue moori, and albino peacock. I also have 3 silver dollars that are small, 3 mollies, a small pleco, and a small rainbow shark. All of these fish we're gifted to me from a friend who works at large live fish supplier but I realize my tank is overcrowded and plan on upgrading to 100+ gallon in the next month or so, I didn't realize how much I'd really love keeping fish lol.

 

[PoppaRyno]

Ok..... Ill skip all the over crowded nonsense since your upgrading. You have 2 issues really at the moment.
1. The mollies. They will not be ok with cichlids.
2. Huge bioload goin on in the 30. Id do very frequent Water Changes at least 50% every other or 3rd day while they are in the 30.

Address those and it sounds like youll be well on your way to a happy 100gl.

Did he give you the mollies to go with the cichlids? Thats a big no no. He should know that being in tbe biz. You cld always get a 10 gl for them to kick it in until the 30 is free.

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[PoppaRyno]

Also... WELCOME TO AA. lol. Meant to do that first.

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[MattMal88]

Hey thanks for the welcome. I know that the bio load is big and I've been on top of that doing water changes just like you describe. My parameters are fine as of this morning my ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate 20 pH 7.8 GH 150 Temp 82F. I run a penguin 200 biowheel for filtration and seems to keep up well. So far the cichlids leave the mollies alone, although strangely enough the one mollie loved messing with the silver dollars and sort of sucking on their sides. He hasn't done that in a while but it was definitely annoying them when he was. And yea my buddy said the mollies would be ok and so far he's been right but I know when the cichlids get bigger there's potential for a problem. By then I should have the bigger tank and the 30 will be freed up for more peaceful fish.

 

[PoppaRyno]

Awsome. Sounds like you got it covered.

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