- Messages
- 38
- Location
- Riverside, CA
Hi, while I have a decade and a half experience with aquaria, I am completely new to apistos. I have one pair of apisto cacauoides arriving next week and I am trying to set up my 18 gallon tank for their arrival.
I have a couple pieces of driftwood that have curves on their bottom that shape nicely like caves. I see that most people use these little clay pots but I have an aversion to artificial objects in my tank and would like to make the driftwood work. I have pretty much complete control over how large the cave is, and the opening for that matter by hollowing out the space in the substrate. What would a good size be for the inside of the cave and the opening? Will they spawn in a driftwood cave like this?
As far as dither fish, is there anything other than pencilfish that will work and not cause problems with fry? I have nothing against pencilfish, but neither my LFS or Petco have them at this time. I have neon tetras in another tank that I could move over without having to worry about QT, but appears that I am being told that they are not good for this.
About water, I have hard water with high pH coming from the tap. I also have a RO filter. In my other tanks I am in the habit of mixing tap and RO 50/50 generally giving me a pH around 7.2/7.4. I had an understanding that pure RO was bad for fish (and plants), but on one of apistodave's websites he mentioned briefly using pure RO. I do have a bottle of Seachem Replenish that I bought and never used. Anyone have any opinions on what would be the best approach between tap/RO/replenish, I do need to consider the plants as well.
I could probably ask questions all day, but no one would read far enough to answer them all, so I will end with a rather trivial one. Will a couple platys cause a problem or should I move them, they've been happily keeping this tank cycled. Plants make it hard for me to catch and move fish once everything is set up.
I have a couple pieces of driftwood that have curves on their bottom that shape nicely like caves. I see that most people use these little clay pots but I have an aversion to artificial objects in my tank and would like to make the driftwood work. I have pretty much complete control over how large the cave is, and the opening for that matter by hollowing out the space in the substrate. What would a good size be for the inside of the cave and the opening? Will they spawn in a driftwood cave like this?
As far as dither fish, is there anything other than pencilfish that will work and not cause problems with fry? I have nothing against pencilfish, but neither my LFS or Petco have them at this time. I have neon tetras in another tank that I could move over without having to worry about QT, but appears that I am being told that they are not good for this.
About water, I have hard water with high pH coming from the tap. I also have a RO filter. In my other tanks I am in the habit of mixing tap and RO 50/50 generally giving me a pH around 7.2/7.4. I had an understanding that pure RO was bad for fish (and plants), but on one of apistodave's websites he mentioned briefly using pure RO. I do have a bottle of Seachem Replenish that I bought and never used. Anyone have any opinions on what would be the best approach between tap/RO/replenish, I do need to consider the plants as well.
I could probably ask questions all day, but no one would read far enough to answer them all, so I will end with a rather trivial one. Will a couple platys cause a problem or should I move them, they've been happily keeping this tank cycled. Plants make it hard for me to catch and move fish once everything is set up.