30 Gallon South American Cichlid/Tetra Tank

[memorywrangler]

I'm setting up a 30 gallon as my first South American cichlid setup.  So, far it's just pool filter sand, RO water, several catappa leaves, a coop heater, a coop light, and a Seacem Tidal 55.  I just filled it today. 

The plan is some plants, a pair of apistogramma, and a school of cardinal tetras.

• Fish: 0
• Kh: 0
• Gh: 0
• Ph: 6.6
• Temp: 82
• Nitrates: 0
• Nitrites: 0
• Ammonia: 0
• Deaths: 0

[Whitecloud09]

Looks good. Any stocking ideas yet?

[memorywrangler]

I'm planning on a school of cardinal tetras and a pair of apistogrammas.  I'm also toying the idea of otocinclus and anglefish.

It's going to take a while, I'm afraid.  I have my heart set on these:

https://dansfish.com/product.detail/6221/Apisto-agassizii-'Blue-Flame'-Trio-(1M2F)-(Apistogramma-agassizii)

which sell out in minutes and are pricey, so I need the tank to be very solid before I order them. 

I've got plants on the way though, and I might start with the cardinals in a few weeks.

On 7/19/2024 at 1:22 PM, Whitecloud09 said:

Looks good. Any stocking ideas yet?

 

[memorywrangler]

I'd been looking for a piece of drift wood for this tank to add some interest and provide a natural cave for my apistos.  I wanted something on the shorter side and something dark that would stand out against the light substrate. 

I finally found a nice piece of mopani wood.  I boiled it 3 times (each time resulting in a coffee-colored water), but it's still pushed the tank pretty far toward being a blackwater.  So far, I'm rolling with it.

I also got some plants in:

• Amazon sword
• Red flame sword
• Brazilian pennywort
• Moneywort.
• Frogbit

I haven't decided where to put them.  Any ideas?

My plan is to plant the tank pretty lightly, since it has such a small foot print.  In the tank's previous life, the plantings really restricted the swimming space and made it hard to see the fish from across the room.  My hope is that the dark background and sparse greenery will let the cardinal tetras really show off their colors.

I turned of the HOB and added the Coop lift tube to my sponge filter.  It's not the prettiest thing in the world, but it sure is quiet.

The frog bit is doing ok, but as you can see in the picture, only a small part of the water surface is illuminated, so we'll see how that goes.  I like the long roots and thought it might be a good way to soak of nitrates.

Parameters:

• Ph: 6.8
• kH: 2
• GH: 1 or 2
• 82F
• Nitrate: 0
• Nitrite: 0

 

 

[beastie]

I think you will find the surface plants shade too much, along with the limited light, and all your plants in the substrate will start wilting. Low light tanks need a very special plants, basically a weed, and none of yours are it

 

But will see how it goes 🙂 

BTW beware of the frogbit roots, if it is doing well, you may end up with something like what I had. They went all the way to the substrate

[Odd Duck]

You can easily trim frogbit roots and they fork and get denser and the plants appear to be more vigorous with more roots.  I’ve had tanks that didn’t have fish that picked at the roots and they will get quite long like @beastie’s pic.  I started trimming them back to about 2” long every so often when they got longer than I wanted.  Keeps them much tidier looking, the plants seem to respond very well to it (I never trimmed every root on any one plant at the same time), and less likely for a fish to get tangled up (probably me being paranoid, I never had a fish actually get tangled).

[memorywrangler]

The frog bit experiment isn't going great. it's getting choked by hair algae (and you can see the nice streamer coming off the lift tube.  Fortunately, the algae can't seem to grow further down in the tank.

There's new grown on the Brazillian pennywort and the sword, but not so much on the money wort or the red flame sword.  I'm still not sure what to plant where.

The more exciting news is I have my first five cardinal tetras in quarantine.  I'm starting the med trio tonight.  I'm going to have to acclimate them to the water in the main tank.   My LFS had them in our very hard tap water.  When I do the water changes at the end of the med trio, I'll replace the water with water from the tank.

Parameters

• Ph: 6.8
• kH: 1
• GH: 1 
• 82F
• Nitrate: 0
• Nitrite: 0

 

Edited August 5 by memorywrangler