tank cleaning crew?

[blueberry_pye]

Hi everyone, So im currently setting up a brackish water 75litre tank for my mollies. I changed the substrate from gravel to white playsand yesterday they seem to love it, they pick it up and spit it out. I havent added any marine salt as of yet ive ordered some instant ocean, just waiting for it to arrive. I still have my 5 peppered corys in there to, im waiting on a 54litre tank ive ordered for them to create a soft water tank for my 18month old sons room! so excited about it! And am also waiting on some plants tolerant of both tanks and some malaysian trumpet snails to aerate the sand. So ill get to my question now i know the MTS will help clean the tank, but is there anything else that is a great asset to keeping brackish and freshwater tanks clean. I know i will still have to clean them just as much, it would help tho if i could get some little critters or fish to help with the job? Also as grosse as this sounds is there anything that actually eats the fish waste? probs not but thought id ask.

 

[Kiara1125]

You can use regular Aquarium Salt to create a brackish water tank, you don't need the Marine Salt. It's just a waste of money. Ask for the waste eaters/scavengers, you could do Ghost Shrimp. I think you can have a few of those for every gallon of water. For the soft water tank in your sons room, it would be nice to have some Tetras in there. It would look nice to have a school of Neons, Cardinals, Glo-Light, Red Eye, and/or Black Neons. You don't have to get all of these, just a few. I would go with the Neons and Cardinals though. I think the colors, of trying to tell which ones are Neons and which ones are Cardinals, play a funny trick on your eyes. lol

 

[OrangeCones]

Aquarium salt does not create a brackish environment. Instant Ocean will work just fine.

 

[skjl47]

Hello; Does anything eat fish waste? This is how I have come to think of it. Ultimately the bacteria in a tank break down the fish waste and take the final amounts of nutrition and energy. They release some compounds that live plants can use in their growth. There is going to be some stuff that has little or no value to even bacteria, I think this becomes the unsightly stuff that we try to remove by mechanical filtration and water changes.

Some fish are more vegitarian and I am guessing that like cows and horses, they are not so effecient at digesting plant material. I seem to know from somewhere that cow manure contains half or more of the grass's starting nutritional value. I suspect that plecostomas feces is much the same. I keep a mid sized plecostomas in a tank with a bare glass bottom. For some time it produced long and unsightly strings of feces which I regulary siphoned out. I had some other fish in the tank. I began tossing some red rams horn snails into it's tank some months ago. Now there are not the long strings of feces, but what must be snail feces. It also appears that there is a smaller volume. The hornwort plants and green algae in the same tank are growing strongly. The water seems to stay in good condition for longer and does look better.

I also suspect that all fish feces have some nutritional content. This is one reason why I like to have snails and live plants in all tanks. I am not convinced that many fish are as eager as snails to work on the feces of other fish, not even the catfish. I have seen fish investigating waste, but doubt that it is on top of a menue. I saw black fish in a nature video that chased hippos around eating the waste. Hippos eat a lot of plant matter.
Don't know about shrimp.

 

[Kiara1125]

Oops, I had a Walmart moment there. Walmart thinks that they know everything about fish!! All Walmart knows is everything to do to kill fish.

 

[Thyra]

That is really a rather unfair statement. There is absolutely no indication that Walmart thinks they know everything about fish. Many of the people who work at Walmart are just very thankful they have a job. They don't necessary get hired to work in any one department and certainly not because they are experts on fish. When they become short handed due to call ins, employees get called anyplace to fill in. So if you expect the girl who normally works in cosmetics to educate you about fish, I think you should go someplace else to buy fish - and do some research first.

 

[IThinkTherefore]

This isn't a statement about Walmart, but about employees and people in general.

I wish we could be more comfortable with just saying "I don't know." "I don't know if these fish are compatible, if they'll fit in your tank, etc."

I know that sales by commission are very rare in small scale sales like this, so that's not really the motivation. Just a shame ;/

 

[1077]

If the tank is to be planted moderately to heavily, I would not worry bout clean up crew, for the plant's will utilize the waste from fishes and use it as nutrient's for growth.