cichlids and gouramies

[FroggyFox]

new tanks are a blast Thats why I like helping other people set them up so I can live vicariously through them instead of sinking my house in more tanks haha.

Anyway...most fish love having places to hide. For angelfish and livebearers they generally prefer plants over rocks and decorations on the bottom of the tank. Bottom feeders (like your pleco) will most likely want to have somewhere dark to hide, as most of them are noctournal...so a driftwood cave would be awesome if you could find some driftwood? SOME of the decoration is for you...but a lot of fish feel more secure when they have places to hide, so you'll actually see them out and about more often the more secure that they feel.

For more decoration ideas you could go check out the "rate my tank" forum and check out people's tank pictures that they've put up.

 

[vinodhv]

so i bought two zebra danios for my tank yesterday and they're doing great. no problems. then i tested the water and everything was working fine too. So today i went to the LFS to get some more danios and to look at the gouramies and angels. I brought some water to test there - just to be sure.

However instead of taking the usual 20 minutes to get there, it took almost 2 hours because of a huge wreck on the interstate. when i got there, the lady tested my water and the PH was ridiculously high - 8.8

ammonia was also high, even though everything had been fine in the tank last night. Also, the PH value that the people at petsmart the night before had was 7.2

so what happened? Did the heat in my car mess with the water? or maybe the test tube wasnt clean?
the two danios are doing great btw.

 

[vinodhv]

oh i've also got the 'sucker' fish in there and he's doing fine too

 

[FroggyFox]

With such different results I'm going to say there was something wrong with the testing...not even the test kits. Really...once you get the lfs to test your water once and it came up with the same thing you got at home...then I dont think you need to worry about it.

I sincerely doubt that less than a day with two danios and a sucker fish in that big of a tank is not going to do ANYTHING to your water parameters, especially since the tank had GOLDFISH in it before and I'm like 80% sure that your tank is probably cycled

If you want to make sure your pH isn't fluxuating you could test the hardness, (kh gh) of your water and/or do some tests with it (leave it out overnight and test it straight out of the tap and again after 12-24 hours)

Did you test your water yourself when you got home from the store? I do think temperature could have something to do with it...but honestly I've never tried testing water outside the normal temperature range up to like 84.

 

[vinodhv]

hey froggy!
I took a water sample to PetSmart and PetSupermarket this evening and had it checked out. Everything was good. PH was about 7.2-7.3. The people at both stores said it was ok for fish. I went ahead and got two other zebras and one powder blue dwarf gourami. I acclimated all three to the tank and they're doing great. I checked the water parameters an hour after introduction and it was stable. The zebras are all getting along but the gourami is hanging out at the bottom and middle, behind foliage.

 

[FroggyFox]

Well cool. I guess I'd just keep an eye on the parameters yourself the ammonia/nitrite and nitrates for a few days and if you dont see anything after a week or so and your nitrates start showing up then I think your bacteria colony should be just fine

Gourami will probably do a lot of that Give him a few days to acclimate to the tank...and leave the lights off for him more than you would normally just to help him get used to things with a little less stress.