Hello everyone! My name is Mike and I'm a 24 year old born again fish enthusiast. I just started up my own 20 gallon long freshwater tank recently. I've had tanks when I was younger but my father primarily took care of them so this is officially my first tank that I'm completely responsible for taking care of. I have a Tetra Whisper ex 30 filter and undergravel filter with a Tetra Whisper 40 air pump. I also have a 100 watt submersible heater in there. I did a fish less cycle and I just added two weather loaches this week. These were my favorite fish growing up because it was like "hide and go seek" when I was looking for those loaches lol. I have a couple questions. (Not sure if I should ask them in here or not but I'm going to anyway). I want to get more fish for the bottom of the tank. Particularly, yoyo loaches or julii cory cats. Maybe both? I wanted to know how many I could eventually have in my tank without overcrowding the bottom(or the tank in general). Also is it a bad idea to fill the bottom of the tank first before adding fish that swim on top? On to the next question. I'm having second thoughts on the ugf especially after reading a lot of negative posts about them. Is it too late to get rid of it and the gravel? I want to put sand on the bottom. Sorry for coming out of the gate while most likely asking questions in the wrong place. Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any advice.
First post on AA
- Thread starter Grux3344
- Start date
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frank98284
Aquarium Advice Freak
Welcome to AA Mike no not to late get rid of that UGF if you go to sand it takes some work and and a lot of rinsing but well worth it.
Convict2161
Aquarium Advice Addict
Welcome to the family Mike
I would go with sand especially with cories..it is almost essential for their barbs and feeding. Just make sure to wash it good! Either pool filter sand or play sand. You could do 3-4 cories and maybe 3 loaches. Loaches and cories will school with their kind so I would recommend at least 3 of each..and that would fill your bottom. I have 3 cories in my 40G B and they are always side by side.
redsea
Aquarium Advice Addict
Welcome to AA! Enjoy the forum!
Scottyhorse
Aquarium Advice Addict
I have cory cats with Flora Max substrate, and their barbs are just fine.
Yup, they should be..just with "sharper" gravel or gravel in general they smaller particles of food fall between the cracks and they can't get it and it also isn't good for that food to be in there either.
I ended up getting some Petco brand black and blue sand. I was just going to get black but the blue sand was on clearance ?.It was very clean right out of the bag but I still spent about two and a half hours cleaning it (just to be safe). My weather loaches love it. Almost as soon as I put them back in the tank, they started burrowing into the stuff. I wish I took a picture before I switched out the UGF and the gravel but I forgot?. Here's a picture of my tank with the sand. Let me know what you think of my setup.
