Temperature: ~73°F (23°C)
pH: 7.2
GH: ~ 8° (140ppm)

I'd like to make sure these conditions are correct before adding the rest of the fish. It's a 75 gallon and will have:

12 Kuhli Loaches
12 Bronze Corys
12 Harlequin Rasboras
12 otos
I'll probably add some cherry shrimp and see if they survive the kuhli loaches.
some trumpet snails,
and a few ramshorn snails that came in on plants

It's planted with duckweed, a couple crypts, one banana plant, some dwarf sags, a few java ferns, some subwassertang, and a little java moss. I'm also going to add a few spiral vals in the back and maybe an anubias.

Would this be overstocked? Would that be a big enough school of rasboras or should a get a few more? The only other thing I might add is a few assassin snails.

Ummmmmm.. tank size?

__________________
12 Tanks, 900 gallons. Discus/Angels/Malawi/Lake Victorias. Just added a 135 & 2 - 29's..

Hello Leo...

Don't worry about the pH, hardness or any of the other stuff. It's not important for a successful "community" tank. The vast majority of fish will adapt to the vast majority of public water supplies.

As for temperature. Most aquarium fish are tropical and a minimum water temp of 76 degrees isn't too warm.

I keep large, planted tanks and keep relatively small fish. So, I don't worry about how many I have. What I do is follow an aggressive water change routine and remove and replace 60 to 70 percent of the tank water every week.

If you do this, you'll maintain a stable environment for your fish and plants. This is the most important requirement for a successful aquarium.

B

__________________
Low Tech Water Building Keeper

I agree, don't use chemicals to alter PH, they just cause problems.
Ammonia, nitrites and nitrates are the ones that are a good idea to test for.

that sure is alot of bottom feeders for one tank IMO, and definetly refrain from using any chemicals to change your water, it usually just causes more headaches. Keep your ammonias and nitrites down to or as close to 0ppm as possible and your nitrates under 40ppm and you should do fine.

__________________
10g- 2 hi-fin fm platys, 3 koi & red wag sword fry
40g Breeder- 6 danios, 4 female swords, 1 male swords
"I was born with nothin and I still got most of it left."- Seasick Steve

It is a 75 so I think the kulis and the corys would be fine, they are peaceful and enjoy company. I think that might be too many ottos though, they need to feed on algae, I don't think you can do more than about 4. I don't have personal experience of keeping any of these fish so someone who does might be able to help more.

You have 48 fish. With the old rule of 1 inch of fish per gallon you are aproaching saturation. I would reduce your number of fish by 1/2 and see how it goes. Keep the number of Cories at 12, they llike crowds and will probably spawn.

Something I forgot to mention was my tap water has a pH of 7.2 and is soft so the conditions I'm aiming for are mostly the same as my tap water. I'm going to use wonder shells to keep the general hardness stable.


To BBradbury:

I'm not sure I believe pH, gh, etc are unimportant. However, I do understand a stable pH is more important than some exact pH. I think the fish I'm getting prefer slightly cooler than average temperatures so maybe 75 degrees F would be best? I don't plan on doing any more than one water change (about 25-50%) a week so I'd like to stock with the right amount to make this work.


I'll just get ten of each and only about 5 otos to try to keep the bioload lower.