greetings new to the hobby

[bulatz]

Hello i got my first 75 gallon tank from a neighbor and well... ive been so excited to set it all up but a lot of challenges i have already faced haha. alot of old school canister filters and what not that have been sitting for over 10 years and ended up just buying new stuff to save me a big headache.

its gonna be a cool community tank with a lot of different color kulhi loaches and other random fish later on. just added 5 baby loaches yesterday and well i will probably make another post in the appropriate thread cause i think i messed up on cycling the tank. but this is the beginning of the fish hobby journey!

 

[Andy Sager]

Welcome to the group.

Mistakes happen when you first get started so don't get too down about them. You learn from them so that you don't make the same mistakes later on.
Your best bet is to ask a lot, A LOT of questions before doing things so you don't make mistakes. In reality, the concepts of fish keeping have been the same for hundreds of years, only the machinery to do them has changed.
As for your " old school canister filters", I've been in the game for over 50 years and I still successfully use things I've used 30,40 even 50 years ago. I use them still because they worked then and the work now. You just need to know how to use them.
Just so you know, Khuli loaches are cool little fish but don't expect to see much of them in a tank that large. They are hiders by nature and more of a nocturnal fish. They are very susceptible to poor water quality and diseases. That's not to say you won't have success with them but they are not a good beginner's fish overall. So keep your eyes open to any strange behavior because that is usually a clue that something is wrong with the tank/water.

Hope this helps.

 

[bulatz]

thanks for the tips, i was scared cause i didnt finish cycling it but it is cycled now and fish doing good eating and what not, i just wanted an opinion i know they are susceptible to alot of things but i bought it from this guy and his shop is pretty run down sort of and definitely not the nicest looking tanks but he has been selling fish for 30+ years and loves the hobby. he said alot of his fish he buys is raised in "florida tap water" so what im trying to ask is, is it possible they might be more hardy then ur regular kulhi loaches since they arent raised in super pristene water?

 

[Andy Sager]

thanks for the tips, i was scared cause i didnt finish cycling it but it is cycled now and fish doing good eating and what not, i just wanted an opinion i know they are susceptible to alot of things but i bought it from this guy and his shop is pretty run down sort of and definitely not the nicest looking tanks but he has been selling fish for 30+ years and loves the hobby. he said alot of his fish he buys is raised in "florida tap water" so what im trying to ask is, is it possible they might be more hardy then ur regular kulhi loaches since they arent raised in super pristene water?

Considering I'm in Florida and lived in different areas of the state, I can tell you that we don't all have the same water in Florida so " Florida tap water" is meaningless. Tank bred and raised fish SHOULD be hardier than wild caught ones but that doesn't always apply. Tank raised fish are more adjusted to tank life and foods so tend to adapt better from one tank to another.

As for the "shop is pretty run down sort of and definitely not the nicest looking tanks but he has been selling fish for 30+ years", if you ever dove in a lake or river or tried collecting fish in their native habitat, you'll notice that their water is clean parameter wise while the areas are dirty, sometimes VERY dirty. Pristine tanks are for the people more than they are for the fish. A few years ago I was in an old store in NJ and was listening to people in the store remarking to the people they were with how the tanks looked dirty, algae everywhere, box filters with dirty floss, etc and had to laugh because if they looked at the fish more than the tanks, they would have been seeing some of the most healthiest fish that I'd seen in multiple new clean stores I'd visited in my journeys. I bought fish there and brought them back with me to Florida. That's how good the fish looked. ( You can see some of them in my albums.) So don't look at the tanks, look at the fish. If you can find fish that have been in the store for weeks and they still look good in their "dirty" tanks, you found a shop you should keep supporting (imo).