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Lulubell

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Aug 16, 2018
Messages
31
Location
Virginia
Hello, all! I enjoy fish keeping and lurking around different fourms for ideas and info. I grew up with aquariums and had some of my own, but got out of it for about 11 years. I just got back into it about 18 months ago. I have a 20 gal. Freshwater. I would love to try a large saltwater some day when time and money allow!
 
Wonderful! What part of virginia are you from? Im in Stuarts Draft. What kind of tank(s) do you have?
 
Im a little undecided about stocking a new tank. Could I get a few opinions please? Its a 20 gallon and currently has 5 green neon tetra and 1 young honey gourami. I cant decide between loading it up with all green neons or 9 neons and mix of 8 platy. I like the oranges and yellow and red of the platy, but also love neons colors and that they school. I really dont want platy fry, but not sure how a tank with all small fish of the same species would look as I have always had community Noah's ark type tanks in the past. Thanks for any input��
 
Wonderful! What part of virginia are you from? Im in Stuarts Draft. What kind of tank(s) do you have?


Northern VA/Fairfax.
I have a divided 20g shrimp tank (reds/yellows) and a 29g blackwater tank. I kept a high tech planted tank for a few years but broke that down last year.
 
Nice. I played around with a blackwater tank before I got this and love it. It was just 5.5 gal and had a few green neons. The tea colored water was differnt and the fish seemed to like the soft acidic water. What did you have in yours? Got any pics? I tried a planted with shrimp and did awful! I think I killed my poor shrimp with ferts...
 
Here’s a pic shortly after setup about 5 months ago.
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Since then I’ve added more fish, DW, and some subwassertang though I’m not happy with how it looks. I use Indian almond, maple, sycamore, and various other leaves to help condition the water.
Currently there are ember tetras, emerald Eye Rasboras, celestial pearl danios, pygmy cories, and (recently) Furcata Forktail Rainbows. Oh, and a single Otocinlus and Amano shrimp (had more of each at one time).
 
Thats a beautiful tank!!! One more question and I will leave you alone ;) when you do pwc does your water go hard and alkaline until the tannins build back up? If so, how did you deal with this? Or is this just a norm of water change in a blackwater tank. I had this prob when I experimented with it in a tiny tank. Could this just have been due to the tank size? I tried evrything in that tank and nothing worked. Could never keep it stable so I gave up and got a 20 gal. :)
 
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