First Plants and Fish stock planning

Finally the replacement bulb arrived. Kudos to Big Al's Online for great customer service and hassle free shipping of replacement bulb. Now that we have the lighting, its time to add the first plants. LFS (Petsmart/Petco) do not have much of a selection. Also they tend to sell off terrarium plants as aquarium plants (bamboo!!?). Anyway, the only two options that they had were Green Cobomba and Egeria Densa (Anacharis). We also got a pack of assorted plant bulbs.

Its also time to start planning the fishes. Aquariums have three distinct habitation zones. Bottom, middle, top. For all practical purposes, fishes living in one of these zones will rarely interact with fishes in any of the other zones. Number of fishes depends on the biological capacity of the aquarium, which depends on number of plans, kinds of fishes, how frequent and how big the water changes are, etc. Basically how much shit the aquarium can breakdown and process without turning the water toxic.

For Bottom dwellers we plan to have a few Otos and Corydoras. Otos are nocturnal and Corys are diurnal, so its nice to have 24/7 cleaning crew. For the middle region I used to have Kribensis before and might get those. Another good option is Bolivian Ram or Blue Ram. All three are varieties of small peaceful chichlids. They are good parents, and take care of their fry and so are very fun to watch. Rainbow shark is also a bottom-lower level fish that I want to keep. Its slightly aggressive and territorial so iffy if it can live with the Krib/Ram.

For the top level, we will have a couple of Angel fishes as centerpiece fish, and a school of small tetras or barbs. Its nice that both of these varieties almost never go towards the bottom of the tank, so you do not have to worry too much about how they will interact with the bottom dwellers. From what I have heard, I can keep at most 3 Angels in my 30G tank. But interestingly enough Takashi Amano has some tanks in his book which are sized about 30G but with 10 Angels. That seems wrong, but then who am I to question Takashi Amano.

A good place to start the research on your stocking is at AquaHobby.com and FishProfiles.com