After only knowing how to care for a goldfish and slider turtles, I "rescued" a Red eared slider named Fred, that I now believe to be female (convex bottom of shell) a few months ago.
I put Fred in a 40 gal tank at first, with some feeding goldfish (while properly caring for Fred with pellets/greens/basking spot ect). They were happy tank mates, Fred wasn't interested in them at all. So I got some new fish (not knowing anything about fish care), got rid of the goldies, and bio-overloaded my tank. Then I learned about the nitrogen cycle and how to test water and keep fish from being chemically burned.
I bought a new 75 gallon tank about a week ago, as pictured (still cloudy from recent sand, yes I rinsed the heck out of the sand first, using aquarium water as the final rinse before adding it.)
The Nitrites were not good in the new tank, horrible in the old so I got some water conditioner, some live bacteria cultures, and some nitrite remover and did an emergency fish move from old to new tank.
I have an under gravel filter set up with 2 plates at the bottom. Filter floss on top of the UG filter, rocks on top of the floss, small layer of sand on top of the rocks.
I have fluval 70 gal hang on tank filter, that is rigged to flow filtered water into the UG filter.
I am going to add a canister filter rated for 60-150 gallons. I am going to get at least one power head with the reverse flow option, possibly 2 for the UG filter.
It's been warm in the summer here, but it's cooling down so tomorrow I'm getting a tank heater, which will be turtle proofed with some plastic piping with holes.
In my tank I have Fred, my 4" Red eared slider, 5 Zebra Denios, 4 Emerald Cory Cats, A Red Tailed Shark, a Bristlenose Pleco, 3-4 Apple/Mystery Snails, 4 Ghost Shrimp. All fish are under 3" at this point, none are full grown.
I want to add about 2 Emerald Cory cats and Zebria Denios. if possible, after the added filtration, some active colorful fish... and Maybe a loach/eel type.
I like active fish so i can look at them swim during the day, and they need to get along with the current fish and such. I will be doing some more research on other fish and updating my filtration before adding any more fish.
I feed my fish different types of flakes and sinking carnivore pellets, as well as algae wafers and occasional zucchini.
The Turtle has shown no interest in the fish at all (except for one instance), and if he starts to, I will separate them, I have a spare tank I can use to quarantine the turtle until I can properly set up the spare tank for the turtle.
The one instance that my turtle showed interest in a fish:
I had 5 Emerald Cory Cats. One of them was not like the others. It didn't want to school with the others, even though they tried to be nice to it. It wasn't bullied by the other fish, and had a different hue than my healthy acting Emerald Corys. All it seemed to do was sleep and swim back and forth against the glass of the tanks, while the others were doing frolicy Cory things.
The Emerald Cory that was not like the others died. I saw my turtle bite it twice then swim away. There were no physical wounds on the dead fish... I assume that Fred was like " What's this here, I'm gonna bite it to find out, ugh not food". Since Fred like to inspect the bottom of his tank.
I keep a close eye on the number of my fish, I check on them often, and work from home in view of my tank. I am aware of the risks of having fish with the turtle, so will continue to keep a close eye on the fish, as long as I have them.
I am testing my water often because It's a new set up, and have some ammonia and nitrite and nitrate removers just in case of an emergency.
I'm wondering what brand/type of canister filter would be best.
I'm wondering If I will have enough space and such to add more fish with the aquarium heavily over filtered to account for the bio load.
Should I add more hiding places or plants?
What types of live food can I get for my fish at the pet store so they get a balanced diet?
Does anyone have any tips, suggestions, information they can give me? I'm just starting out and doing everything I can to give my fish a good, healthy, non-toxic life.
