YAHHHH

[Fishckabibble]

well after calling all the petstores within a 50 mile radius i have finally found one that will take all of my chiclid fry and the mother for store credit, im sooooooo glad i have been racking my brain as to how i was going to find homes for all these little guys (and gals) so i am finally going to be able to try my idea of a planted tank with tetras and a blue cray.... but heres the question, will i have to re-cycle the tank and remove the gravel and replace it with substrate? and will 25 watts be enough light in a 10 gallon tank?

 

[Big Vine]

Glad you found a home for all those cichlid fry.

Okay, what's in the tank that you'll be housing the tetras and cray in at the moment?

If there's nothing in there, then get something in there right away! You need to keep something in there that will produce waste, in order to ensure that the beneficial bacteria that were already in the tank do not die off from a lack of food (waste).

Do you want to change the look of the tank by removing the substrate? If not, then there's no need to touch it (unless you wanna maybe give it a routine vacuuming when you do a water change).

i am finally going to be able to try my idea of a planted tank with tetras and a blue cray

Just so you know, the cray is quite likely to eat all of the plants in the tank (mine did). But yeah, otherwise, 25 watts for a 10 gallon tank isn't bad...2.5 watts per gallon.

Big Vine

 

[TLM4x4]

Thats awesome you found a store to take all of your wee ones +mamma for store credit!! Yea, I dont think you will be able to have that "planted tank" with the cray in there AND the neons would be tastey morsels for him as well. Theres no need to change out your substrate (a fancy word for gravel/sand) even if you were to plant it you can do it in reg. substrate and have success. As long as you keep some fish in that tank in the mean time it wont go through a cycle or minicycle..unless you change out the substrate, then it will. You could plant it with some nice realistic looking plants and still put the cray in there and it would be happy but as far as tank mates for them Im not real sure...maybe a snail?

 

[Big Vine]

Just to add my 2 cents again.

I've kept two crays for several months, and have only had one fish succumb to the cray...and it was an ailing fish, at that. It had some sort of bloating/intestinal blockage (not dropsy), which gradually got worse over time, until one morning I found the blue cray eating it.

Like TLM4x4 said though, be prepared for the chance that any fish you keep with a cray will get eaten. Tetras are a good fish to have with crays, since they're quite fast, have short fins, and won't try to eat the cray either!

Good question about the snail though...I still haven't experimented with keeping snails and crays together, but I'll soon start a snail-breeding tank for my dwarf puffers (when I finally get them), so I'll be able to tell you more about it at that time.

Big Vine

 

[Fishckabibble]

well now im in a dillemma, hubby is dead set on getting a blue cray, im dead set on getting a planted tetra tank (this will all be done in the 10 gallon where the chiclids are right now thats the reason i have to wait on getting all this going) so a cray will kill all the plants? guess it means he will have to get his own 5 gallon for a cray then because the 10 gallon is all mine, was my christmas present. and yes im soo glad someone was willing to take all the babies i know i dont have the room to rehouse them when they get bigger will post a pic later but they are only about 2 months old right now if that.

 

[Fishckabibble]

and another thing, would 6 neons and 6 rummynose tetras be too many for a 10 gallon or would they be ok with frequent water changes?

 

[Fishckabibble]

heres the babies like i said they are still quit small.

 

[Platy_breeder]

Those are really cute fish. I don't have any cichlids yet, but I just won a 55g tank so I'm going to get some tomorrow(it already comes with 2 Jack Dempseys, but if they're too big and aggressive for the other fish I'm going to get, I might not be able to keep them). I'm definately getting some convicts but I'm not sure what else yet...