Stocking advice?

[monsteridea]

Alright, I wanted to introduce fish very slowly into my tank, even though it's already been cycled. But my grandfather basically told me I had to take them all at once because he was taking his tank down that day, and didn't really care much for the risk. The fish have been in the tank for most of the day now and everything seems to be going great. I will be doing 10% PWCs daily just to be on the safe side.

There are 12 fish. Originally, I thought he had a small (7-10") pleco, but once the thing got into my tank I realized it was definitely not a Pleco but a Chinese Algae Eater! This would definitely explain his missing tetras here and there over the years.

The tank is pretty much stocked, but I feel bad as there are many schooling species within the tank that do not make up a school in their current numbers. The single neon tetra likes to school with the glow light tetras, and the lamp eye tetras (2) try to school by themselves, as well as the bleeding heart tetras (2). Then there are 3 adult tiger barbs, 1 green pair and another male albino who I must admit is my favorite so far - the seems to do well by entertaining himself with the filter current and swimming back and forth in the tank.

My question is should I add a few more to a species so they don't feel so awkward or should I just leave the numbers as it is? Originally I wanted to get a few neons for that poor lonely one, but now I'm not sure if it would be a good idea?

This is a 38 gallon tank with one live amazon sword, 2 marimo and a few smaller fake plants, with a fake drift wood in the middle. There were some other live plants but they weren't doing too well so I pitched them.

 

[Laser]

Since these fish are schooling fish I would try to beef up those schools a little, or remove one species and boost the other ones up some more.

Also, I think it's worthwhile to note that a 10% water change isn't going to do as much good. I would do at the very least 25%. Think of this way: If you start with 100 ppm of nitrates and you do 5 10% water changes over the course of 5 days you'll end up with this 100,90,81,73,64. So you'll end up with 64 ppm of nitrates because you are replacing that 10 percent every time so you're making harder to get at that older water. If you just did 1 50% change you'd be at 50 ppm of nitrates.

 

[Mumma.of.two]

Alright, I wanted to introduce fish very slowly into my tank, even though it's already been cycled. But my grandfather basically told me I had to take them all at once because he was taking his tank down that day, and didn't really care much for the risk. The fish have been in the tank for most of the day now and everything seems to be going great. I will be doing 10% PWCs daily just to be on the safe side.

There are 12 fish. Originally, I thought he had a small (7-10") pleco, but once the thing got into my tank I realized it was definitely not a Pleco but a Chinese Algae Eater! This would definitely explain his missing tetras here and there over the years.

The tank is pretty much stocked, but I feel bad as there are many schooling species within the tank that do not make up a school in their current numbers. The single neon tetra likes to school with the glow light tetras, and the lamp eye tetras (2) try to school by themselves, as well as the bleeding heart tetras (2). Then there are 3 adult tiger barbs, 1 green pair and another male albino who I must admit is my favorite so far - the seems to do well by entertaining himself with the filter current and swimming back and forth in the tank.

My question is should I add a few more to a species so they don't feel so awkward or should I just leave the numbers as it is? Originally I wanted to get a few neons for that poor lonely one, but now I'm not sure if it would be a good idea?

This is a 38 gallon tank with one live amazon sword, 2 marimo and a few smaller fake plants, with a fake drift wood in the middle. There were some other live plants but they weren't doing too well so I pitched them.

The tiger barbs are fine. They are all the same fish so will school fine. IMO the tank probably won't handle a full school of each of the tetras. Probably better off to rehome one or two kinds and up the schools of the remaining. The CAE might need to go also. They can get larger than what yours is now. You'll have to keep an eye on it for signs of aggression.

I agree with the above post. 10% daily won't be doing much.

 

[monsteridea]

Thanks everyone. I'll take into consideration of re-homing the CAE...

As for the nitrates, they are actually showing 0-10 ppm on my charts, not 100ppm?