A couple of tanks

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Yep. The species name is Upside Down Catfish. If you want the scientific name it's Synodontis nigriventris They are a " " dwarf " " catfish because they only get about 3 inches long. You might be right about buffering the water, plus that's kind of a lot of work for me. Would adding driftwood to the tank lower the ph and hardness?
 
Yes, it will but how hard can it be to change out the substrate in a 20g? You have softwater fish mostly, so the driftwood with the CC will just make it neutral.
 
2 blue rams - good
2 apple snails - good
3 tiger barbs - i'd get at least 8
1 clown loach - schooling fish, get 3-5
1 zipper loach - idk
1 peacock gudgeon - good
1 amazon puffer - based off puffer guru advice get at least 3
1 upside down catfish - good
1 bristle-nose pleco - good
1 common pleco - NO gets way too big and creates too much waste, not worth it
 
+1 on all the advice in the post above!
 
No the 20 Gallon isn't where the crushed coral is, it's in the 75 gallon. Thanks for your help everyone. One of our rams died and we decided to take all the crushed coral out and put silica sand in there instead. I know some of my fish are schoolers but the tiger barbs and the clown loach school together so hopefully that will be fine, and I really don't want to increase the bio-load any more by getting any more fish.

What do you think will be the least stressful way (for me and for the fish) to change the stubstrate in my 75? I am trying to decide if I should net all the fish out and put them in a big rubbermaid tub with air and a heater while I do it, or if I should just use a net to get all the substrate out while they're still in there. Also, since it's coral, I know it's going to get cloudy as hell. Is there a safe product I can add to get rid of this just so I can see well enough to put the rocks back in there without crushing any fish.

About the common pleco: This wouldn't be my first choice of fish for the aquarium but my girlfriend has had this guy for over ten years and there's no way we can get rid of him. I'm just glad he's in a 75 gallon aquarium now because he lived most of his life in a 20. We've got a sponge and an HOB because I know a big ass pleco and two apple snails are going to poop a lot!

Thanks again everyone.
 
No the 20 Gallon isn't where the crushed coral is, it's in the 75 gallon. Thanks for your help everyone. One of our rams died and we decided to take all the crushed coral out and put silica sand in there instead. I know some of my fish are schoolers but the tiger barbs and the clown loach school together so hopefully that will be fine, and I really don't want to increase the bio-load any more by getting any more fish.

What do you think will be the least stressful way (for me and for the fish) to change the stubstrate in my 75? I am trying to decide if I should net all the fish out and put them in a big rubbermaid tub with air and a heater while I do it, or if I should just use a net to get all the substrate out while they're still in there. Also, since it's coral, I know it's going to get cloudy as hell. Is there a safe product I can add to get rid of this just so I can see well enough to put the rocks back in there without crushing any fish.

About the common pleco: This wouldn't be my first choice of fish for the aquarium but my girlfriend has had this guy for over ten years and there's no way we can get rid of him. I'm just glad he's in a 75 gallon aquarium now because he lived most of his life in a 20. We've got a sponge and an HOB because I know a big ass pleco and two apple snails are going to poop a lot!

Thanks again everyone.
 
My girlfriend wants to do it the hard way....

Since she added a bunch of white sand to the crushed coral, and she really likes the look of a white substrate, she wants to just sift through the substrate and pull out all the crushed coral. (By "crushed coral" I'm referring to a mix of half crushed up sea shells and half TRUE crushed coral, which is just finer crushed up sea shells). That way she can still have her white sand in there. Will this be okay?

Personally I think we should just remove ALL the substrate, save the sand/coral mix for when we decide to do a big brackish tank in the future, and use an 80 pound bag of silica sand for the substrate.
 
Mega cloudy!!!!

Dependig on what sort of HOB you have you may be able to get a Micron filter for it, if so that would be the best way of getting rid of all the dust that you're ging to stir up changing out the substrate - Magnum Pro 250 comes with a micron filter as well as regular.
If the micron filter is an option then I would say you'd probably have a clear tank somewhere between 2 and 6 hours. If you can't get a micron filter on the tank then you could use a 'water clarifier' additive but I would advise moving the fish to a rubbermaid like you said, first - they are supposed to be safe but I nearly lost a pond full of fancy goldfish and koi by believing that to be true. Using the clarifier you are going to have to clean out your filter media when it's done so would be best if you could save any bio-media in tank water or it could get pretty gunky.
Or you could just wait it out untill the dust settles but that could take a few days or even a week.
 
Just toss filter floss in your HOB filter & keep changing it out when it gets clogged.
 
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