Small Tanganyikan shellie tank

[howmanyds]

It's finally a possibility for me to setup a second tank. I have an old 20 gallon in the garage that used to house turtles and I'd like it to be a tank for my pearlies (meleagris / lamprologus stappersi).

1) Would a tank with a small colony of pearlies be a safe place to put other Tanganyikan fry?

2) Could I put holding cyprichromis females in the tank until they let go of their fry, before returning the moms to their school in the bigger tank?

3) if I stripped cyps / julies / gobies (eretmodus), could I drop the fry in with the shellies or would the little buggers eat up the fry?

 

[Freakgecko91]

I'd think they would eat fry. I don't have experience with those species though, but I know my multies would DEMOLISH any foreign fry lol

 

[howmanyds]

I think I'll put in a divider to keep fry separate from shellies.

Any other suggestions on keeping a 15 gallon tank? (I measured - it's not 20, as I thought before).

I have an internal filter rated for 40 gallons with bio balls, carbon, and floss. I think I might take out the carbon and put in a sac of purigen.

For a tank housing such a small amount of small fish, I'm cycling it to 2 ppm of ammonia. Is that enough? Too much?

 

[howmanyds]

Scratch that --- I'm going to start a new thread with these cycling small tank questions.

 

[Brookster123]

If you have an established tank already than just take some filter media out and put it in the new filter, it will cycle way fast!