Started ten gallon kit, now what? :)

[AquaMan779]

Id give it a couple of months before deciding whether its M/F. Ive heard of people keeping nerites in isolation for 2 or 3 months and if they lay eggs, let's be kind and say they returned them to the pet store and got another and tried that one in isolation. Only adding them to their display tanks once they are sure they have a male.

As to other fish to add. For a 10g tank, how about 4 or 5 guppies? All males if you want to be 100% of no babies. Or some females if you might like to try breeding in the future. They come in a variety of colours etc.

I was thinking about guppies because of their colors but I don't want the tank to be overrun by them if/when they start breeding.

I'll probably just stick to the six pygmy corys, one nerite, maybe some other snails and ten cherry shrimp. Have you ever had these type of shrimp? I definitely don't want them to breed too much either.

I actually have a 36 gallon that someone gave me but did not know where I wanted to set it up. I saw this 10 gallon kit for sale for $35 around Christmas time and I just HAD to get it. I'm starting to see this as my practice tank. I mean, I'll still care for the fish and animals first and foremost, but I'm not going to put so much pressure on myself to have the perfect scape, substrate, asthetics, etc.

 

[AquaMan779]

Just found out the nerite is a female, lol.

 

[AquaMan779]

Thank you to everybody who got me to this point!

I now have a tank with five pygmy corydoras, ten cherry shrimp and one nerite snail!

They all seem very happy now. One corydora died in shipping, otherwise there would have been six. I will probably get another six so they can be happier. AqAdvisor has me at 62% stocking, 290% filtration, and 13% water changes every week.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to get the bloodworms and brine shrimp for pygmys to eat. The snail and cherry shrimp were good with the algae wafer I left for them. There was a lot of biofilm buildup on the java fern that I got in December as well as the heater, so the corys and shrimp have been eating that a lot.