Starting up a new 30g - Ideas?

[Bengals]

My wife and I are starting a new 30g that we purchased this past weekend. We've read a ton on the internet and have started the fishless cycling. We were able to get some great used driftwood, slate, and lava rock caves and have set up the tank with black diamond sand. I'll upload some photos tonight. We currently have an Aqueon quietflow 55g on the tank and have it set to a balmy 80F for cycling. We washed the sand for hours but the water is cloudy although I'm not changing it as I don't want to disturb the cycling. I hope that's right?

We're planning to add some java fern to give it some real green (we dislike the look of the fake plants but do not want to add CO2...etc).

When we first set up the tank the Ammonia/ Nitrite/ Nitrate / pH was 0/0/0/7-7.2.

I added ammonia to bring it to ~4ppm.

Checked last night and we're now at ~2-4/0.5/5/7-7.2 so we're starting to get the cycle going. I think the use of the driftwood probably helped as I'm sure it had a good starter amount of bacteria. I've also ordered an active filter from anglesplus.com which we'll set up tomorrow afternoon.

We have some questions as we wait for our tank to cycle regarding what fish we should be looking at. We've been using aquaadvisor.com to try to estimate our stocking capabilities and have come up with the following:

6 - Drawrf Rainbowfish
6 - Neon Tetra
4 - Sterbai Cory
5- Yellow Shrimp
1 - Drawf Gourami

at this point we're at ~90% of capacity. We'd like to make sure we have some invert to walk around though we're not married to the yellow shrimp. We'll obviously need an additional HOB filter especially as a backup (so any thought would be great). What does everybody think of the fish? Which should we start with after our tank is cycled? We'll obviously get them in sets and not all at once but want to make sure we do this right.

Other fish we were considering (either subbing or to bring capacity a bit higher):
German blue rams (maybe temp will be a problem)
Cherry barbs
Paradise fish (very pretty) (may eat the shrimp?)
Ghost Glass Cats (seriously cool looking)

 

[Mrs.h2012]

You could actually stand to bump the temp up more, to around 86 if you wanted.

 

[Bengals]

I'll definitely raise the temp. We've also been keeping the lights off, the cloudiness of water is a bit frustrating through when we do turn it on to check. If it's bacteria, it should clear on its own?

Does anybody have any thoughts on the fish?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Mrs.h2012]

I'll definitely raise the temp. We've also been keeping the lights off, the cloudiness of water is a bit frustrating through when we do turn it on to check. If it's bacteria, it should clear on its own?

Does anybody have any thoughts on the fish?

Thanks in advance!

Ive never had experience with any gouramis or dwarf rainbows so on them I'm not any help. As far as cories go up their numbers to atleast 5. If you like rams I suggest you start out with the Bolivian rams first, they are hardier than most other rams. I suggest either keeping a single ram or if you want two try your best to keep females just incase you get a pair, things could get ugly for the cories if they paired and spawned.

 

[Bengals]

We can definitely start with the bolivian rams. I turned up the temp to ~86 and will check tonight to see what the temp reading is. I noticed last night that my ammonia levels haven't really fallen but my nitrites have increased to 1ppm. Based on all the guides it says ammonia is supposed to fall first before nitrite rises? Hopefully my cycle isn't stalling. The pH was still 7. Fingers crossed and today I get the active filter from anglesplus.

Anybody else have any suggestions regarding the stocking?

Tx again.

 

[librarygirl]

Your stock looks good. You could probably add a school of 6 cherry barbs and one bolivian ram (bolivians tend to be more hardy than germans and they can live in a lower temp range, whereas most other rams need temps of at least 80 which might be problematic for most of the other fish).

I wouldn't do the paradise fish due to potential aggression. The glass cats look cool but you might never really see them, plus they can get up to 4" which seems a bit large for a 30 gal.

For a second HOB filter I'd do an Aquaclear, it's one of the best HOBs I've owned.

 

[Bengals]

I'll look into the Aquaclears. Maybe get another 50g filter. Also I was thinking I should add a prefilter. Do you guys cut your own to stick on? I just need something to cover the intake portion that's in the tank, right?

Just looked online and the 50g and 70g are almost the same price ($1 apart). No harm in getting a bigger filter, right?

 

[Mrs.h2012]

I'll look into the Aquaclears. Maybe get another 50g filter. Also I was thinking I should add a prefilter. Do you guys cut your own to stick on? I just need something to cover the intake portion that's in the tank, right?

Just looked online and the 50g and 70g are almost the same price ($1 apart). No harm in getting a bigger filter, right?

No harm at all! The more filtration the better! Many here have enough filtration for atleast double their actual tank size, some even have triple filtration. When I had my 30g I had an aqua tech 30-60 and an aqueon quiet flow 30 on it. On my 55g I have the 30-60 and an aqua tech 20-40.

 

[librarygirl]

No harm at all; bigger is always better in terms of filtration. For a pre-filer I've used the Fluval prefilter sponges, they work well.

 

[Bengals]

That prefilter sponge looks perfect. I'll definitely get that. I was able to take some photos of the tank now running. There are 3 shots of the tank (with driftwood off CL and black diamond sand with some lava rocks). Yesterday we added an amazon sword plant and some smaller plant (started with an A I think. Will look it up later). The plants in these images are fake as I took them before messing around. I want to change them all to live plants as the tank matures. Sadly the driftwood came with some old java moss on it that had died (from being taken out). We tried to pull as much off as possible but it just was too hard so we put them in the tank anyway. I wish we could add a fish or invert to finish cleaning. Any ideas?

The last shot is the active filter from angelsplus attached to the air hose.

In any case the water still seems a bit cloudy. Not sure why. Seems to be worse by the top of the tank as the bottom looks clear.

We want to get a group of neon tetras to start with a small bioload. Maybe in the next few days as everything stabilizes. Ammonia still sitting around 0.5 but nitrite is now 0 and nitrates are around ~10.