# Newbie - Guppies



## acorbin (Apr 17, 2013)

Hi All...I've done a lot of reading and now I'm more confused than ever.

At the moment - I have a 60 cube gallon, lightly planted tank (2 swords, and some other red looking sword)

I have:
3 - corys 

1 - Cardinal tetra 
(he can from a previous tank that was being neglected, that I felt sorry for)

3 - (male) yellow guppies

3 - (male) red guppies

2 - (male) lyretail guppies

3 - (baby) white mollies < i threw the bigger ones, in another tank, the bigger ones, were just mean and nipped at some of the guppies fins


So my question is 2 parts;
1. Can i add more fish?
2. what is compatible with guppies...I've read Angels (yes/no) same thing with Gourmais....hence my confusion...some sites say ok...some ppl say no...

very confused...and suggestions??


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## mistersprinkles (Nov 4, 2013)

acorbin said:


> Hi All...I've done a lot of reading and now I'm more confused than ever.
> 
> At the moment - I have a 60 cube gallon, lightly planted tank (2 swords, and some other red looking sword)
> 
> ...


Did you cycle the tank? Do you test your water? If you don't, get an API freshwater master test kit from Big Al's. They're about $30. The liquid tests not the test strips. Tell us what your ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are. Follow the instructions in the little manual that comes with the tests. Some tests require a waiting period before being read, while others are a simple add 3 drops and check the results.

Once you establish that your tank is actually cycled, you should either remove the cardinal tetra, or add more cardinal tetras. You should also get more corys. In a tank that size you could easily have 10 of them. Get all the same kind. Different kinds won't school together.

Once your tank has been established for a couple of months, you can add a centerpiece fish like a single or pair of pearl gouramis (make sure they're male and female) or an angelfish or a pair of angelfish (again make sure they're male and female).

If you don't like either of those two types of fish you could add something else larger and peaceful, like keyhole cichlids, apistogramma, kribensis, rams (either kind).

If you don't like those, how about a female betta?

Or you could add a few more schooling fish. Maybe a small school of pencilfish? Or a few black ruby barbs? Lots of choices out there.

What kind of filtration are you running?


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## Kimchi24 (Mar 22, 2013)

you sure its 60 gallons? not 60 litres? thats a significantly low stock amount for such a huge tank


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

a 60 gallon cube sounds like a beautiful tank.

Avoid gourami and angels with the smaller community fish, they can be quite aggressive. If cycled, you have lots of room for more fish.

Being a cube, it means its not long so not the best for larger fish who want more room, but this sounds like a perfect tank for nice schools of tetras and such


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## Kimchi24 (Mar 22, 2013)

what i dont understand is that if he had a 60 gallon tank, why would the question of adding more fish arise with an already minimal stock? a 60 gallon is massive and there is no way 15 small fish would ever seem like a large stock for the tank


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## mistersprinkles (Nov 4, 2013)

pyrrolin said:


> a 60 gallon cube sounds like a beautiful tank.
> 
> Avoid gourami and angels with the smaller community fish, they can be quite aggressive.


I've kept pearl gouramis, dwarf gouramis, honey gouramis and angels with barbs and tetras (nothing smaller than a medium bleedingheart tetra) lots of times. The angels and gouramis may chase the smaller fish away, especially if breeding, but usually they are quite tolerant. In a smaller tank it can be more difficult but in a 60 gallon, even if it's a cube, I seriously doubt a pair of pearl gouramis or an angel fish would pose much of a problem. With any species you can get the occasional meanie. All animals have slightly different personalities.


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## TorontoBoy (Mar 14, 2013)

If this is a 60G cube you should be able to add 4 times the fish you have now, give or take.

If this is a 60L/15G cube then you might be at the limit. I would remove the cardinal tetra. They really like to shoal for safety.


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## acorbin (Apr 17, 2013)

I was advised by one of the sales associated for "big als" that adding too many fish at once wasn't a good idea....so slowly adding...that's why I wanted to know what else I could add safely


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## Zidartha (Nov 16, 2012)

mistersprinkles said:


> Did you cycle the tank? Do you test your water?


These details need to be addressed before you can add anything...

k.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

Ok, this is a new setup. Get a master test kit. Once ammonia and nitrites are 0, you slowly add a few fish, then monitor the ammonia and nitrites again. Read the sticky at the top about cycling.


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## bob123 (Dec 31, 2009)

If this is a new set up I would go and buy a bottle of Safe Start and add it to the tank and not add any more fish for a week then add fish slowly. Good luck.


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## mistersprinkles (Nov 4, 2013)

I would suggest reading the following that relate to new tank setups:

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/guide-to-starting-a-freshwater-aquarium/

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/i-just-learned-about-cycling-but-i-already-have-fish-what-now/



bob123 said:


> If this is a new set up I would go and buy a bottle of Safe Start and add it to the tank and not add any more fish for a week then add fish slowly. Good luck.


Where are you getting a week from? (No offence but,) As far as we know he just started cycling the tank a week ago. He should probably wait a lot longer before adding any new fish.

Imo, what he needs to do is get an API master liquid test kit and test daily for ammonia/nitrite/nitrate until the cycle is finished. And if it's not finished, he needs to do very frequent water changes.

Another thing he could do is ask the forum if any members can spare a good chunk of cycled filter media. A nice chunk would solve his cycling issue. That's what I did to start my new tank.


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## bob123 (Dec 31, 2009)

Safe Start is a newer product on the market and made by Tetra, you can add this to a new set up and add fish instantly with no harmful effects to the fish. I have tried this and it works. The one week period I had mentioned was to give the tank a chance to get balanced and the fish in the tank to stabilize.


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## mistersprinkles (Nov 4, 2013)

bob123 said:


> Safe Start is a newer product on the market and made by Tetra, you can add this to a new set up and add fish instantly with no harmful effects to the fish. I have tried this and it works. The one week period I had mentioned was to give the tank a chance to get balanced and the fish in the tank to stabilize.


No such product exists. The closest thing was Marineland's Bio Spira. Even that didn't cut it.

They all claim that you can start a tank, add their product, and add fish instantly, but in reality, all these products do is increase the speed at which the beneficial bacteria establish. They do not immediately establish the biofilter.

If you set a new tank up, add this product, and add fish, you will notice that you still get an ammonia and nitrite spike. The only difference is that the cycle completes a little faster. That's it.

These products are not live nitrifying bacteria, because the nitrifying bacteria in our aquariums would not survive being in a bottle on a shelf for a couple of months. These products are heterotrophic bacteria that simply increase the rate at which the nitrifying bacteria establish.

The one I use is Seachem Stability. But in reality, they're all pretty similar.

EDIT: I just looked up SafeStart. It appears to be the same as Bio-Spira (contains nitrospira and nitrosimonas). So in theory, yes, it could instantly cycle an aquarium. It's just that everything I've read about people using these products says that they don't do that. They just speed the development of the biofilter.

I honestly don't think using these products is as effective as just getting some cycled bio-media off of somebody else.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

I use API stress zyme and it is like the others, helps give it a nice boost. Whatever you use, stability, stress zyme, used media or whatever, you need to monitor the cycle


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## Jordin (Sep 14, 2011)

pyrrolin said:


> Avoid gourami and angels with the smaller community fish, they can be quite aggressive.


I disagree with this statement. I have had very good experiences with those fish.

Gourami's and angelfish can be very peaceful. In a good tank setup, they will get along with almost any kind of community fish...

I have 6 angels and some gourami's that I keep with tiny guppies, small tetras, platies, etc.. many types of small fish and they leave them all alone. No aggression at all.


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## Kimchi24 (Mar 22, 2013)

Jordin said:


> I disagree with this statement. I have had very good experiences with those fish.
> 
> Gourami's and angelfish can be very peaceful. In a good tank setup, they will get along with almost any kind of community fish...
> 
> I have 6 angels and some gourami's that I keep with tiny guppies, small tetras, platies, etc.. many types of small fish and they leave them all alone. No aggression at all.


i've had the opposite reaction lol.


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## bob123 (Dec 31, 2009)

Depending on the size of the Angels, full grown more than 4"sl. they are aggressive, or if you have a very large tank with plenty of hiding places for small fish I say no to guppies.


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## mistersprinkles (Nov 4, 2013)

Angels vary tremendously from one individual to the next. I've kept them with small fish in 3 different instances. In all 3 they were fine. The smallest thing I kept them with were young bleeding heart tetras, which were about guppy sized. 

My friend, on the other hand, had an angelfish back in 2000-2003 which was quite vicious. It's luck of the draw. No reason not to try it.


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## acorbin (Apr 17, 2013)

bob123 said:


> If this is a new set up I would go and buy a bottle of Safe Start and add it to the tank and not add any more fish for a week then add fish slowly. Good luck.


Long story short,its not a new tank...its been running for over a year, disaster hit, when asked our house sitter to look after the tank & came home to green hairy algae all over & most of the fish died....so I had kind of start over...pulled all that algae out, even dumped some RO water...


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## mistersprinkles (Nov 4, 2013)

acorbin said:


> Long story short,its not a new tank...its been running for over a year, disaster hit, when asked our house sitter to look after the tank & came home to green hairy algae all over & most of the fish died....so I had kind of start over...pulled all that algae out, even dumped some RO water...


Can you be more specific about what you're doing with the RO water? You're not just using straight RO on the tank are you? That's not a good thing.


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