Back into the hobby, need stocking ideas

[duanes]

I see your point but a bare bottom tank needs to be syphoned.
A tank that's planted with easy to grow plants lots of leaf litter and small fish can be an eco system that hardly needs any maintenance at all. It all depends on personal taste at the end of the day but these set ups can be very attractive and very little work at all. Just cover the detritus with fresh leaves every few months.

I agree with the above.
I never (or hardly ever) vacuum, because of the plants, leaf littler and other mulm that regularly accumulate.

I consider a bare bottom tank more work, and it can can often teeter on the edge of crashing because only the filter is responsible for almost all bio.
If there a power outage or if some other anomaly occurs most bio-filtration ceases.
In a tank with substrate, plants, and other botanicals, they all will continue using and feasting on the ammonia and nitrite produced by the fish.

Where I live, our water plant broke down almost 2 months ago, so I have not been able to do water changes or even add make up water all that time, except when it rained a while back, or one day when the plant came back on line for a day. (I do constantly run powerheads for circulation and aeration)
Enough water has evaporated, that I had to shut down filtration.
Because of the plants, and other biological activity has continued, even with no filtration, (so far) no loss in fish, and even water parameters like nitrate have maintained at levels in my normal range goal of @ 5ppm.
Mt stocking load is also comparitivly low, the largest fish of 8 fish in the 180 gal is only about 8", most 4-6"

 

[Kingster]

I agree with the above.
I never (or hardly ever) vacuum, because of the plants, leaf littler and other mulm that regularly accumulate.
View attachment 1483905
I consider a bare bottom tank more work, and it can can often teeter on the edge of crashing because only the filter is responsible for almost all bio.
If there a power outage or if some other anomaly occurs most bio-filtration ceases.
In a tank with substrate, plants, and other botanicals, they all will continue using and feasting on the ammonia and nitrite produced by the fish.

Where I live, our water plant broke down almost 2 months ago, so I have not been able to do water changes or even add make up water all that time, except when it rained a while back, or one day when the plant came back on line for a day. (I do constantly run powerheads for circulation and aeration)
Enough water has evaporated, that I had to shut down filtration.
Because of the plants, and other biological activity has continued, even with no filtration, (so far) no loss in fish, and even water parameters like nitrate have maintained at levels in my normal range goal of @ 5ppm.
Mt stocking load is also comparitivly low, the largest fish of 8 fish in the 180 gal is only about 8", most 4-6"
View attachment 1483912
View attachment 1483913

I think I mite go heavily planted, have the tank swamped in jungle val or something similar, anyone have any recommendations?

whats a good way to combat alge and detritus building up on the glass?

also what are some good large fish species I can keep that wont shred plants, if it were a bigger tank I would get an asian arowana, but need something a bit more smaller. What about a zebrini pike cic?

 

[celebrist]

I agree, but my point is that to my family that would see decomposed leaf litter as detritus on the substrate, Id rather just use a bare bottom tank so ots still visually appealing to non enthusiasts

if you are going bare bottom i don't have any suggestions that i can think of
i thought you were going to go heavy plants?

 

[Kingster]

if you are going bare bottom i don't have any suggestions that i can think of
i thought you were going to go heavy plants?

I just changed my mind, its gonna be a peninsula style aquarium.