Intro fishes into planted

[nostalgia]

How long do u guys wait or do u intro fishes into a newly setup straight away?

[Clement79]

For my around three to five days. I include yamatoes shrimp also and otos.
If you are worry, put some hardy fish inside first for the whole tank to stabilise.

Cheer...

[]

[kubrich]

What i do is leave it bare of livestock for a week,2nd week add shrimp and maybe a couple of ottos. On the 3rd or 4th week then i add in fishes but a few at a time.

[vinz]

The key is SLOWLY... a few fishes every week. Algae control crew first.

[theodore]

I like to intro a few fishes into a newly planted setup at the end of the 2nd week. Not a very gd practise (it's probably at the nitrite phase then) but usually too impatient to wait any longer than 3 weeks. I've experienced low enuff casualty rate (0-1 per tank) so far but that's probably cos i keep hardy fishes like pencilfishes and corys.

[nostalgia]

I'm thinking of throw 5 otos and 2 flying foxes into the tank
(that is the only few maintance crew i have got) today which is only the second day... and wondering if i can add 10 rummy nose and 8 neon tetra....
can give me more advices?

[Goondoo]

atleast provide the tank size....

[nostalgia]

oh heehe forgot it's 3 ft
36x18x18 inches or 36x16x16 can't recall....
lazy to measure heehee
oh yeah only have a few plants in there at the moment!

[Goondoo]

Adding 2 SAE will do as a start... adding small number of fishes each week is fine. Just curious, why do you have special likings about flying fox?

[lorba]

he probably likes it as a 'fish' rather than algae maintenance crew, anyway, i didnt catch any phrase from him that he has a special interest in it.

We people keep SAE, yamato etc more on a follow-and-do basis, knowing that they can help us reduce algae. But let us not forget that we should really be keeping something we really like, and not cut-and-paste a aqua scene from books like amano's.

[Goondoo]

I agree.... I'm even considering keeping a fleet of SAEs . SAEs to be the only fish type in my 4 footer to be exact

[lorba]

yeah, actually i had that thought before i started out... was really attracted by the beauty of the schooling SAE back at PS. But i guess you can't have moss then, would all become botak!

oops, seems to have go off track.

[nostalgia]

no special liking for flying foxes
just saw that they were cheap and big when they are being sold at a lfs near my place so i just got two...
my house here dun sell SAE... must cycle abt 5~10mins to another place and i was lazy.... plus those shops sell sae very small.....

[cbong]

At the end of week 1, I introduced:
2 SAE; 10 Yamotos; 2 otto

At the end of 4 weeks ... today, I added:

10 Cardinals; 2 hatchets; 1 cory; 2 round body rams; 2 killi; and a monster looking sucker with slim long body and long fins. A lot at one-go I know, keeping fingers crossed!

[Goondoo]

SAEs are most efficient when they are small....

[sherchoo]

For cycling fish you should get the SAE instead of the flying fox. Reason saying that is because later when you find out they do nothing for your algae, you would want to rid of it. That's where your problem comes... dun tell me you want to throw it in some pond, reservoir or longkang rite.

As goondoo, mentioned, small SAE attacks algae more efficiently when they are in their juvenile stage. As they get bigger, they'll get smarter and wait for commercial foods that you feed the other fish. Best if you get them small. Anyway, they are hardy enough to accept the task of cycling your tank.

[nostalgia]

oh well than they will have to be my aro's tank mate than

my aro is a friendly aro.....
only attack others when hungry...

[Osprey]

Just to share my experience...
Added 1 buffer and 2 otos in week 1;
added 3 pencils & 5 malayan shrimps in week 2;
so far so good. However, I am still not able to "locate" all 5 shrimps after releasing them into the tank, so not sure whether they are still in there.

[Goondoo]

If you have not enough snails in your tank.... problably all ends up in the puffer's tummy...

[Osprey]

----------------
On 3/18/2003 11:29:35 PM

If you have not enough snails in your tank.... problably all ends up in the puffer's tummy...
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Hi Goondoo, dun scare me can. But my cute little puffer is only about 1cm in length and all the shrimps are bigger in size. You think still possible for the puffer to have them for meals?