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Godswood - my personal paradise.

It's really a comment in relation to 20 litres being enough space for 20 tetras, I've seen these in display tanks at zoos (warsaw/berlin) and they will dart the entire length of 3 meter displays in a flash - they're some of the most active fish we could keep, 20L just feels horrifically cruel to me. Perhaps our definition of thriving is a little out of sync.
Agreed. I’ve seen them swimming free in rivers, even those 3 meter zoo tanks are nothing compared to hundreds of miles of rivers. If we were to consider them swimming free thriving then we shouldn’t keep them in aquariums at all. It’s all a matter of perspective and definition.
 
We can all agree aquariums are not the wild, I must have clouded the point I was trying to make. I wasn't making a comparison about aquarium sizes more about the needs/activity of the fish.



Very jealous of your Columbian(?) trip, do you have any photos as many of us would love to see what you saw - did you take an underwater camera?
 
No, I understand what you were saying. My point is that what we consider thriving is really our own personal perspective. I can only go off my experiences watching the fish and judge by their behaviour whether I think they are thriving or not. I have had a lot of past experience keeping fish, I started when I was 8 years old and I'm now 50. During the last 42 years I couldn't say how may fish tanks I've had but it's easily over fifty, maybe over a hundred. I have had over a dozen at the same time. If you're including small breeding tanks then I've had over thirty tanks running at the same time. I have kept fish at much higher stocking levels than what people tend to keep them at nowadays and from what I saw they appeared to be thriving to me. I even bred several species, including Cardinal Tetras.

Unfortunately the trip where I saw the fish in the wild was when I was about 9 or 10 and I didn't get any photos of them. Fantastic memories though, would recommend it to anyone.
 
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Mark, not to take anything away from your past experience with fish or even the trip to whatever place but no single “experience” or poor practice will disprove all the other recommendations.
If you kept tanks and bred fish just like or close to what a fish store does, then how does that make it right?
I mean you can’t verify stress levels in fish found in the store with 30-50 fish in a 20 gallon can you? Unless you see them sick or dying..
The “I’ve done it before so whatever anyone says doesn’t count” approach is not cool. I’m sure most of us are trying to give good advice and hope to see a tank thrive be it your tank or whoever else may be...
Take care!
 
Mark, not to take anything away from your past experience with fish or even the trip to whatever place but no single “experience” or poor practice will disprove all the other recommendations.
If you kept tanks and bred fish just like or close to what a fish store does, then how does that make it right?
I mean you can’t verify stress levels in fish found in the store with 30-50 fish in a 20 gallon can you? Unless you see them sick or dying..
The “I’ve done it before so whatever anyone says doesn’t count” approach is not cool. I’m sure most of us are trying to give good advice and hope to see a tank thrive be it your tank or whoever else may be...
Take care!
I never said that my experience disproved anything and if you look you’ll see I took note of the recommendations and made some changes. I didn’t change things entirely to what was recommended because I don’t totally agree with the recommendations, which is my prerogative. I appreciate any advice given but I’m not under any obligation to take that advice. It seems many people today, especially on the internet, feel like they are being insulted or something if someone doesn’t take their advice. We are all free to take or leave advice.

I never said that I kept fish like or close to what a fish store does.

I agree that the “I’ve done it before so whatever anyone says doesn’t count” approach would not be cool but that hasn’t been my approach. My approach has been “I’ve done it before and it worked well so I know it works well”.

I’m sure you are trying to give good advice, nothing wrong with that. Twisting what people say and having a go at them because they don’t listen to people’s advice is not cool. I came here just looking to share my fish tank with everyone not get harassed because I don’t want to follow particular advice. Nice place!
 
The fish stock is planned as follows:

2 German Blue Rams
30 Harlequin rasbora
1 Male Dwarf Gourami
6 Corydoras sterbai

Along with:

5 Nerite Snail
5 Amano Shrimp

I’d consider this a relatively heavily stocked tank but I’m sure the Harlequins and Corydoras would still vote for these sorts of numbers ;)

I’d be surprised if 2 rams will really be successful long term (that’s not my experience with M ramirezi) but Mark has stated he’s going to have multiple tanks so I suspect he’ll move fish as needed

I’ve done similar stocking levels in the past, and more recently, much lighter stocking levels ... fish and shrimp have thrived in both systems - and I maintain nitrates at ~5ppm as there’s plenty of fish veterinary etc studies that indicate biochemical changes/immune compromise in the presence of higher nitrate levels (not that anyone embracing EI is going to agree with me :wideyed: ) - I just wouldn’t keep certain fish such as Altum angels or chocolate gourami sp. in heavily stocked tanks or tanks that lack sufficient height or footprint (because they won’t be particularly “happy” in those situations)

I tend to follow the “rule” that fish should have 10-20x body length “swimming room” (in at least one direction) :)
And I keep my tanks at much less than 5-10X flow as I often keep fish from lower flow “natural” waters

Elsewhere someone mentioned that the Spec 19 was too small for a Betta, instead a Flex 34 was much better ... in terms of tank water volume I agree, in terms of swimming space I’m much less convinced, in terms of flow rate I don’t recommend the Flex for a HM or RtHM Betta unless one has substantially reduced flow ...

I’m retiring my 60F and 45F tank’s as I just don't feel comfortable keeping even shrimp or HMPK Bettas in such shallow tanks - when I move the inhabitants to a more standard height tank, they’re obviously much more “zen”

Anyway that’s my 2cents o_O
 
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Mark, I really wish you the best luck with it. Not my intention to start a fight here; my advice is as good as my experience and I’ve never had good luck with high fish loads in small tanks because at some point in our hobby most of us get lazy / busy with life and behind with the maintenance and when that happens a heavily stocked tank will rear it’s ugly teeth pretty fast...
This might not be you but there will be perhaps new people reading your journal now or 10 years from now and think “gosh 40 tetras + 5 ottos and 6 corries in a 10 gallon tank with a HOB can really be done and they attempt it only to leave the hobby couple months later because it worked until it didn’t work anymore...
Please don’t get offended , it’s the internet after all and opinions are like you know what; Everybody’s got one.
With all that being said, looking forward to some pics of your setup!
Cheers!
 
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