New member from So. Cal.

[Jammer89]

Hello all been browsing around for awhile and seen nothing but helpful folks and good attitudes. Great community you all have here .

My name is Jamie and I've had a couple aquariums in the past but still consider myself a novice and my last serious tank was about 10 years ago. So here's what I got now.

60 gallon (I'll get actual dimensions later)
1 ea. 35gph and 50gph powerheads set up for UG and a penguin 280. Cycles the tank 6x per hour.
Some slate and driftwood.
Assorted live plants: A couple amazon swords, giant hairgrass, micro sword and a couple anubias nana.

Stocking list:
14 neon tetras
14 black neon tetras
9 rummy nose tetra
2 corys
3 balloon rams
6 barbs. 3 tiger and 3 albino tiger
2 ghost cats
4 otocinclus

water parameters:
ammonia 0 ppm
nitrites 0ppm
nitrates 40ppm
pH 7.8

The set up is approximately one month old and cycled rather fast at around 3 weeks. I cycled it with goldfish and the barbs. The gold fish were donated back to my lfs because they have an adoption tank .

Sorry about the low quality pic. It looks crystal clear in person, I promise. lol

I would love to hear any comments or advice at this point so please, if there are any concerns among you, by all means, voice them.

Glad to be here

Jamie


I'm having a great time with this as is the family and we are all learning together.

 

[Jammer89]

Just updated my profile and album.

Any advice is appreciated. overstocked? under lit?

It also appears that my rams have contracted ich . What do you all think?

 

[mfdrookie516]

I would agree with your diagnosis... they do appear to have ich I would start treating asap... I prefer the heat and salt method, but with the ghost cats and otos in there, you might be better off just slowly raising the heat up to 86-87 and doing some good gravel vac'ing

 

[Jammer89]

^ Thanks for your reply. So is it safe to assume that a typical over the counter medicine won't work?

I recently started doing 50% WC's weekly so that wont be a problem. I kinda like the discipline aspect of owning an aquarium too for some reason. What increments should I raise the temps at should the over the counter medicines prove to be detrimental to the inhabitants?

 

[mfdrookie516]

I'm not a fan of meds. I only use them when there's no natural method to cure the disease. For ich, simply raising the temp and doing daily water changes with gravel vacs will cure it most of the time. There are some strains of ich that are heat resistant, but those are few and far between. The gravel vac'ing helps rid the substrate of the parasite as they fall off the fish.

 

[KatieJ]

Cool tank, and welcome to AA! I'm from(ish) so. Cal too over the summer; unfortunately there aren't any good LFSs around La Verne like I hoped there'd be.

 

[Jammer89]

^ Thanks. We have a few but mostly chain stores . Not a problem though as long as your armed with knowledge. Unfortunately, I dislike the dedicated FS we have here as they are more interested in money than the hobby, which saddens me.