Newbie from scratch

[stechappo]

Really nice them fish, but just understand that if you do the fish in cycle with them there is a good chance of loosing one or two, some people use Zebra Danios to cycle with, tough choice to do but they are very hardy and can stand the rigmarole of the varying water parameters. The guppies they wont look at there best either till your tanks established, this I have learnt the hard way. Good luck though.

[Martinspuddle]

The safest way to cycle a tank is the fishless cycle, here’s a link to the guides section that explains it:

https://www.aquariumforums.co.uk/guides

And to keep shrimp of a certain colour/pattern you keep them with their own species. Any difference in colour/species will eventually cause them to revert back to natural colours.

I'll will add, that you need to move on new shrimplets (young shrimp) with poor colour otherwise the colour slowly but surely be breed out. In my case I did the other way round and sold all my good coloured shrimps to Aquatic stores in favour of keeping the wild type Neocaridina.

[Drifty]

Thank you guys

I have no plans to add any live animals until the tank has cycle.
If it takes 12 weeks 18 weeks I'm no rush

As for the shrimps I have written down: Own kind, One color (blue or red), Get rid of the newbies that don't match in brightness lol

[codheadjohn]

There are different grades of shrimp, which denotes how vibrant the colour is. The higher grade you get, the longer they will keep their colour through the generations. You can make it better by removing the lesser coloured ones.

[Stephen]

So I looked it up my water is moderately hard. my post code is po5 2dg.
My cycle for tank is using fluval biological cycle.

Hi David

According to Portsmouth Water your water is 16.39dGH which is hard (they rounded the figure down).
I don't understand why the water company say 'moderately hard' when the water is definitely 'hard' almost verging on 'very hard' (maybe a typo error).



Here's my hardness table. (click to enlarge)



All the best

[plankton]

Portsmouth water almost refuses to come out of the tap.....
I got through three kettles when I lived down there for 18 months!
I'd forget anything that wants soft water unless you spend time "playing" with the water.
I didn't keep fish while I was down there, but used to frequent a shop in Havant when I went there that used RO in some tanks that needed it.