Good 5-10g starter kit

^^ Everything he said, tetra's can be quite sensitive and will die if you add them before the tanks fully cycled, I'd buy them from a reputable local store vs petco/petsmart everytime I've bought neons from one of the big box stores they've died with in a week.

When you add shrimp make sure you got your decor taken care of they'll want some places to hide and climb, rocks, fake or real plants.
 
verbal said:
That sounds like a pretty reasonable stocking to me. If you do a "fish-less cycle" I would start with the tetras. The reason I would start with the tetras is they are less hardy, so I would want to get a healthy group of them established in the tank. I also would quarantine the male guppies for a couple of weeks. If you have nothing else, a jar in the tank with an airstone and a lot of water changes could work.

If the first fish are going through a cycle I would start with the guppies, and possibly add the tetras in stages. Also feed lightly when the new fish are added to allow the biological filtration some time to catch up.
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I'm going to try to do a fish-less cycle using Stress-zyme. Interesting that I should add the tetras first, since they're more sensitive. I would have guessed adding the hardiest fish first to really get the bacteria up and running, but I guess after a successful fish-less cycle that's not really needed.

One thing I'm wondering is: I know tetras like a school of 6 or more. Would I be able to do a split of 3 neon and 3 cardinals, or would it have to be 6 of one species for them to school and feel safe?
 
Also one thing I just thought about for red cherry shrimp, during a gravel vac while doing the weekly water change, I would have to separate them in another tank or quarantine them somehow to avoid sucking them up huh? That alone seems more work than just not having a shrimp clean up crew and gravel vacuuming weekly myself. That's why I was thinking a snail might be better since I wouldn't have to worry about that, but I definitely like the aesthetics of having RCS better than a snail.
 
cardinals and neons will probably stick together though IMO you'd be better off sticking with just one or the other.

Can't speak much on vacuuming with shrimp, I have sand substrate and dont really have to vacuum it.
 
fakeyfakerson said:
This might warrant a new thread, which I'll probably do in a week or so, but as far as stocking goes I'm thinking

2 male guppies
6 neon/cardinal tetra

and maybe in the future some RCS or a snail or two

would that decent for a 10 gallon or would it be pushing it with the guppies?
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That is what I have, but I also have 2 Corydoras (small catfish)
 
Just got back from petco and petsmart. I ended up buying 10 pounds of petco black gravel, does gravel quality matter? I haven't done much research on it yet. I also bought a small bottle of stress zyme, a top fin gravel vac, aquaclear plus, and the marineland LED 10 gallon kit.
 
I never used the Petco gravel I imagine it'll probably have some dust in it should be fine just rinse it good before adding to the tank, 10lbs might not be enough though. Some gravel can be kinda sharp and not good for certain bottom dwelling fish but is fine for the ones you've mentioned you wanted.
 
TL1000RSquid said:
I never used the Petco gravel I imagine it'll probably have some dust in it should be fine just rinse it good before adding to the tank, 10lbs might not be enough though. Some gravel can be kinda sharp and not good for certain bottom dwelling fish but is fine for the ones you've mentioned you wanted.
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Yea I did notice some dust on the bottom. I was also looking at the topfin gravel at petsmart and it was finer and smaller gravel, but a lot of them the black was rubbing off to show silver underneath. I didn't want to end up with a bunch of uncolored gravel in a few months, so I went with the petco which was all black. I'll buy another 5-10 pounds if this doesn't look like enough.
 
The stress zyme can be used for fishless cycling, right? I researched it a bit beforehand and I've read that people have had a lot of success with it, just wondering if anyone here uses it.
 
It claims to have bacteria, although I'm not sure I would trust it to have the correct types...granted in a fishLESS cycle there isn't much to lose. You should try it out and keep us updated with the progress to see if it makes a difference or not.
 
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