My 15G Experiment

[Shiki]

Hi All,
Thank you so much for the advice.
I now have 2 tanks and will be working on a 3rd soon. What I'd like to show here is my 15.

It's now 2 weeks and a few days old, so i'm still dealing with the cycle, but here is what I have. Yes I got a combo that some advised against, but one person put a logical argument forward so I went with it.

• 2 Marbled Crayfish
• 4 Silvertip Tetra
• 4 Serpae Tetra
• 5 Ghost Shrimp - 3 of them very preg
• 5 Amano shrimp
• 1 Pleco

They have been together for the two weeks and doing well.
I lost 1 each of the Silvertip, Serpae, and Amano to the cycle. Had the tank extremely cloudy for 2 days, bought one of those green machines and the day it came the water cleared, but I still put it in there.


So they seem fine and happy, and basically ignore each other... for now.

What do you all think?


p.s.
The crays don't really clip the plants either, but i'm sure they eventually will.

 

[TMRC Exotics]

Long term I don't see this going well. Also if you're aware of cycling then why start with so many fish/inverts?

 

[sinibotia]

It's not an experiment. There's no control, no hypothesis, and not nearly a large enough sample size. What you have is a hope that you'll fall within the statistical outliers for all of the times this has been tried, and it won't end badly. I hope that it works out too but I agree with TMRC. About it ending badly and also about way overdoing it for a fish-in cycle.

 

[Shiki]

I actually didn't plan to have this combo in here. It's just that my 10g wasn't doing well and and took out what was there and put them here and starting that one over and letting it cycle with just one fish.

Current info in this tank based on API Strips.
Nitrate - 80
Nitrite - 0.5
ph - 7.5
KH - 40
gh - 0

Last PWC 3 days ago

 

[ImACoolguy]

1. API strips are very inaccurate, liquid test kits are x1000 better

2. If you are shows signs of ammonia and nitrite then your tank never finished cycling or simply can't support the bioload.

3. About every pleco species I can think of outgrows a 15g tank. Clown pleco being the smallest at 4-5 inches once adult.

4. You need to water change. A lot... Nitrite is present and toxic to fish, the nitrates are also high.

I think majority rules in this case. From what I've read many advised against that combo but you took the advise of just one that said its okay...

Caleb

Sent via TARDIS

 

[FishayFishay]

1. API strips are very inaccurate, liquid test kits are x1000 better

2. If you are shows signs of ammonia and nitrite then your tank never finished cycling or simply can't support the bioload.

3. About every pleco species I can think of outgrows a 15g tank. Clown pleco being the smallest at 4-5 inches once adult.

4. You need to water change. A lot... Nitrite is present and toxic to fish, the nitrates are also high.

I think majority rules in this case. From what I've read many advised against that combo but you took the advise of just one that said its okay...

Caleb

Sent via TARDIS

+1. I agree with the majority as well. I hope this "experiment" works out for you and all but you might want to rethink some of the decisions you made on this tank. Best of luck to you.

 

[Shiki]

Update

Hey All,
Few weeks later and I wanted to just give an update.

Everything going along fine, levels have evened out and I got the master testing kit as suggested.
I did have 2 casualties as to be expected. Lost a silvertip (but not to the cray. Had an accident with a gravel vacuum...yikes) and the tall plant got clipped to hell (yes that was the cray).

The shrimp are getting big, I didn't bother trying to save any babies they might have had so that went to food and both crays have molted twice since my last post. One actually seems to be turning blue in the legs.

So all in all it's going ok. I do PWC every 3 days, but even though it's going well, I'm probably taking the crays and pleco out to my 30g, that i'm doing a fish less cycle in. Too hard to maintain a good setup on a new tank with so much in it as everyone here stated.

Will post pics later.

 

[ImACoolguy]

Glad to see some advice was taken.

Yeah I have a cray with plants and it's not going the greatest. Hornwort is the best plant with them because it's a floater and they can clip on it and eat it all they want.

Mine decided to clip his star Repens and anarchis.

In the end crayfish and plants just don't mix.


Caleb