I’m Mel and I am hoping to start up a new aquarium in the next couple of months after being out of the hobby for about 10 years.
Previously I had a 180l community tank that we had to sell due to a house move, with swordtails, tetras, a big Bristlenose named Silent Bob (I still miss him
) and a few dwarf chain loaches.I’m currently hoping to go for a 240l tank, tropical again (currently the Juwel Rio 240 is the front runner due to size requirements) and ideally I’d love for us to have discus.
I’m still relearning everything I’ve forgotten since last having a tank, and also learning about all the new developments since then - my old tank ran on a standard internal filter and a powerhead!
At the moment I’m looking into canister filters, as the tank is going in our living room so I do want something that will run pretty quietly. I know the Jewel comes with an inbuilt, so I’m wondering about keeping that and adding a smaller canister as well. Any advice would be great on this topic, there’s so much conflicting advice on level of filtration!
In terms of ideal stocking, what I’d love to have are approx 6 juvenile discus roughly 5” to 6” to grow on, but not too small so I have to overfeed. I’m def looking at German stendkers as we live in a hard water area and our local fish shop has these kept in HMA filtered tap water and they do great. Then I would love to have a small shoal of cardinals/rummy nose/lemon tetras, some corys, Otos, and a pleco (bristle or gold nugget).
Decor wise I’m probably going for a thin layer of light substrate either sand or small gravel, driftwood and pebbles with a couple of plants but not too many, and ideally anchored on the wood rather than planted, to minimise cleaning. I still need to do more research on the plants!
Oh and we do have a cat, so that’s another thing I’m trying to plan ahead for and work out how that will go
Anyway, just wanted to say Hi and give a bit of info about where I am in my planning. We are currently touring loads of local fish shops talking over tanks and filters, to try and get the equipment part ironed out, then it’s on to tank set up! Yay!
