Tried twice and it’s ended disastrously with me and DH disappointed and confused at where we’ve gone wrong.
We’ve had:
- 24 litre with heater and filter in a room with no natural light stocked with 10 ember tetras and 2 Corydoras; loads of algae and unclearable, constantly dirty gravel (this was before we knew cories should have sand
Read that small tanks were hard to keep and should have live plants so bought a big tank...
- 250 litre with filter, heater and two T5 lights, had sunlight catching one side of the tank and stocked with the original embers, Pygmy Corydoras, 2 dwarf blue gourami, 5 or 6 guppies and two small loach things that I can’t remember the variety of.
The guppies died one by one, fine one minute then dead.
The gouramis were fine as babies but when grown up one just stayed in one plant never venturing out because of the other one.
I made sure he got food but the poor little fish died.
The plants never grew much, they got completely covered in green furry algae while the sand was covered in a horrid slime type algae.
We had fishless cycled both before adding fish and regularly did water changes
DH has tentatively suggested trying again.
A 40 litre tank, situated on a cabinet, no natural light.
How do I make this work?
In my head I envisage a beautiful, lushly planted tank with a single Betta fish or 12 or so ‘micro’ fish, like chilli rasbora or something.
But I’m not feeling confident about our ability to keep it nice and algae free....
How is it done?