stocking advice

[Pipedreamer86]

ok i have had my 150g tank running since August. If youve followed any of my posts you know i did a fishless cycle with pure ammonia, added first fish i believe in september. there have been ups and downs along the way from purchasing sick fish mostly, but here we are almost in the new year and i am pretty established. I have 10 lampeye tetra, 10 black skirt tetra, 3 yoyo loaches, and 9 assorted corys, and in a separate tank I have about 5 cory fry i will move over when they mature a bit more. i also have 1 honey sunset gourami and 1 Bi-polar turquoise rainbowfish who is fine with all other fish, but when placed with ANY other rainbow fish becomes jack the ripper. i have looked into bigger schools and sexing issues, he just doesnt like his own kind. anyway to finish off my stocking i would like to add maybe 4 angelfish, and pair of bolivian rams or blue rams. i want the tank to be heavily planted, but havent had the money to spend on the plants yet with the holidays, and other things popping up(tires are expensive) anyway i was wondering if it would be advisable to wait on planting the tank and letting it.grow out some, then adding the angels/ rams? Ive heard lampeyes and dwarf gouramis can be nippy and there is a lot of open space in the tank ive bought low light plants for the ones i have but they still grow so slow.

also any critique of my stock is welcome, but i will not add more rainbows. the guy is a nut. his color is even brighter since hes been alone and he eats and swims with the.black skirts.

 

[Wiggles24]

Fish have their own personalities! LOL that's funny though, well not for the rainbows that got eaten.....

 

[Pipedreamer86]

anyone have any helpful insights

 

[Pipedreamer86]

yep fish are definitely an enigma sometimes lol.

 

[Rivercats]

Personally I too have a large tank, 220g, and I wouldn't add the angels or rams until you get it planted well and the plants size up alittle. The rams will prefer the heavier planting with more cover and angels even tho small will do better with plants that they can use to get out of the line of sight of other more aggressive angels if it arises.

 

[Pipedreamer86]

Thanks rivercats, i thought so. Its just frustrating waiting for plants to grow lol. The problem i think is that the tank, being almost 2 feet deep, is going to take forever to fill in the height at which most of the fish swim. I assume that is the area you would want the line of sight broken up. Can you reccomend any fast growing, bushy and tall low light plants? I have some swords in there now but they seem to be growin so slow and more out than up. I am going to try to start dosing liquid ferts, but i cant do special lighting at this time.

 

[Pipedreamer86]

Oh and rivercats i posted some pics of my baby corys and u didnt comment :'(

 

[Rivercats]

Thanks rivercats, i thought so. Its just frustrating waiting for plants to grow lol. The problem i think is that the tank, being almost 2 feet deep, is going to take forever to fill in the height at which most of the fish swim. I assume that is the area you would want the line of sight broken up. Can you reccomend any fast growing, bushy and tall low light plants? I have some swords in there now but they seem to be growin so slow and more out than up. I am going to try to start dosing liquid ferts, but i cant do special lighting at this time.

Which post did you post baby cories... ??? I'm not following the Cory thread today so let me guess they are on there... lol!

If you have a deep tank (like I do) with low light the only thing that could help growth right now is get some root tabs around those swords. Swords are really heavy root feeders so giving them some ferts at the roots could give them a boost. Also try some Jungle Val, I prefer Corkscrew but Jungle seems to grow so much faster, and Water sprite. Plus there are some low light stem plants that might work, like Ambulia and Anarachis. I'm having a brain fart and can't think of any others right now but I know there are.

 

[Pipedreamer86]

Yep they are on the cory thread i started a while back. They are doing really well.

I will look into fertlizers. Do you buy all your plants online? I only ask because the plants at the store seem crazy over priced. Like 7-15 dollars for starter pieces of the swords depending on size. If i were to plant my whole tank in one shot id spend several hundred dollars at the store!

 

[Rivercats]

Send me a link to the post, I must have missed it!

I do buy my plants on line, people crab about shipping costs but one day I sat down and figured with the mark up on LFS plants compared to the price of shipping for the amount of plants I needed it was actually way cheaper to buy them on line, pay the shipping, get a bigger variety of plants to choose from, and still come out cheaper on total price.