[Virtual Roadie]

I just bought a little spec tank and am wondering if it is ok to put 2 fancy male guppies in it. I purchased a little heater for it as well. I'm new to aquariums so this is a learning experience for sure. I'll be putting the tank together today. I've been reading up on 'cycling' so hope I get it right! I also purchased a live plant (not sure what it's called) to put in right away. Any suggestions on fish, or will guppies be ok? It's a tiny little tank so I want to be sure to do this right. Thanks for any suggestions you can offer.

 

[tbarabash]

Might be a bit small for 2 guppies... they need 2 gallons minimum, which the spec is yes, but I'm not sure how much of the 2G is made up of the filter area in the back. You should be able to shove your heater into the space where the pump and flexible hose sits so you don't have to put it in your main tank area, I've done this on a couple specs and it works well and still keeps temperature even t/o the aquarium.

Some people here won't be too happy about you using live fish to cycle on the basis it is cruel and can be torturous to the fish (which is true I guess, can damage their gills for the long run) so another good way to do it is to just get your tank up and running and every other day add a pinch of flake food and let it sit in there and rot thus providing an ammonia source. However if you can get some filter media from someone with an established tank you can just shove it in beside the bio rings in the spec filter and with adding some flake food you should be able to be fully cycled within a week, depending on how much media you're going to be able to add.

Good luck and have fun, don't get discouraged when things go wrong at some point in time which I assure you they will. It's normal

 

[Virtual Roadie]

Thanks for your advise, much appreciated! I've got one live plant in there now and have decided against the fish. I'm waiting for the tank to cycle (have to get a test kit, or find out if my LFS will test for me) and have decided to go with some little shrimp in this tank. I'm going to see if I can get some filter media from my LFS to speed things up, hope they'll help me out! Thanks again.

 

[tbarabash]

Shrimp will be great. I use my spec right now for my good coloration shrimp moms to give birth so I can clearly see all the babies and separate the good colored ones into my shrimp tank and put the poorly colored ones in my larger community tank.

If putting shrimp, start with cherry shrimp to get used to keeping them before moving onto something a little harder. Cherries are very hardy and will survive and reproduce in just about anything. Make sure to put enough substrate in the spec to cover the small inlet hole on the back wall of the tank (it's about 1-1.5" off the bottom of the tank, look and you'll see it) so any babies don't crawl into the filter and get stuck there and die. Also It's a good idea to wrap some pantyhose around a sponge or something else and put it on the filter sponge side of the overflow on top in order to stop any little babies from crawling back there into the filter sponge, I've had it happen before and it's a pain in the @ss to cut them out of it without crushing them

 

[Virtual Roadie]

Thanks again, your advise is really helping me out here. I'm new to all of this and am trying my best to get it right I've found a person in Calgary that is selling shrimp for 1$ ea, sounds like a deal to me. My LFS wants a lot more and doesn't keep them in stock so I'd have to wait for the order to come in. This is day 3 for the tank, hope the cycling starts soon...I haven't noticed any changes in there yet and from what I've read, it sounds like I should see some clouding, color changes and maybe algae? How long did it take your spec to cycle?