35L tank - So many questions!

[fishybits]

Finally bit the bullet and got a small 35l tank and now trying to work out what to put in. The tank is mainly for DD who is 8 months old as she loves visiting the Sea Life aquarium so the fish have to be brightly coloured.

I was thinking about 6 neon or cardinal tetras and 3/4 shrimp. The water here is very soft so the cardinals might be a bad idea. I'm very aware of overstocking and don't want the fish to be unhappy if there are too many.

The shop gave me some weed to put in the tank which I did on Wednesday but it's going brown so I think it's dying, will the tank be okay without weed as there's just a stingray filter (good for a 55l tank) and a water heater so was wondering how oxygen gets into the water.

I set the tank up on Wednesday and put Aqucycle into it to speed up the bacteria but is it really still too soon to put fish in? I can wait if needed sits on hands

I'm a complete novice in all this so any help would be gratefully received.

On phone so apologies for all errors!

[Marne]

Theres not that much you can put in a 35ltr, neons would be ok but they like harder water and a tank that has been set up for a while (4+ months).

You could get a betta (fighter fish) they are bright an d very pretty (see my new betta on my profile page) they are very friendly (with humans only, not with fish). Mine is in a 28ltr tank with plastic plants. You dont need to have real plants, i only have one real plant in one of my 5 tanks (and thats for the snails).
You could also have 3 or 4 male guppies but i find they tend to die easily in a small tank.

[EauRouge]

Yes, I'd go with a betta. 35 litres is too small for any shoaling fish.

You don't need to have plants (although your betta will love them!), it's water movement that helps to oxygenate the water. If you position the filter so that the flow out ripples the surface then that will be OK. You can also add an airpump and bubble stone if you want to.

Before you add any fish you will need to do a fishless cycle so that your betta doesn't get ill. The aquacycle stuff you can get doesn't do any harm but I've tried loads of different 'cycling' products and none of them have done what they claim to do.

Marne- neons are soft water fish, not hard water :)

[fishybits]

Thank you very much to both of you. Will go and purchase a water testing kit and try to do this properly from the start.

[Marne]

Eau, oops (got the hard water soft water the wrong way), we have hard water so probably why i didn't have much luck with the tetras .

Deffently go for a betta though, i'm loving mine, he already comes up to the tank to see me.