Pictus Cat, Sun Cat Tank Mates, 50 gallon

[Richard B]

What size footprint is your 50G? ie how long & wide? (not height)

[echankarsingh]

So I now have 2 Pictus catfish, 2 male Dwarf Gouramis, 3 female Dwarf Gouramis, a Kribensis(he's getting along well with everyone), 4 Kuhli loaches, 2 Lg Pepper Corydoras. I absolutely love my Gouramis, really wish I could put a Powder Blue in there, my LFS has some really vibrant ones But, after alot of consideration and researching, I think I will be adding 4 small Rainbowfish at the end of the month.

[Viktor Jarikov]

Have you somehow missed Richard's question?

[echankarsingh]

Okay so I wasn't able to get on here for awhile as my crap computer crashed. Sooooo, I finally found someone to take my Sun catfish and I traded him for a 4" Opaline cross Blue Dot Gourami(1 year old), he's very beautiful and healthy....but my problem is I read numerous times that Gouramis will dull or darken in color when they are angry or stressed. My gourami was happy(for the most part) and a very nice light blue when I brought him home, he swam around lots for the first day but now for the last 2 days he has been hovering in one corner(most of the time) and he's Very dark blue. I watched him for an hour last night and he went for 1 short swim, then back to the corner and dark blue again so I made him a nice cave, and he was using it this morning but still a dark blue colour....Should I be concerned or am I just way overreacting?? Is there a treat I can give him to get him to "come out of his shell"?

[echankarsingh]

I totally missed Richard's question. I have to confirm the measurements but it's 36"x18"x19".

[echankarsingh]

Update for my tank contents: 4 Kuhli loaches, 2 Lg pepper Corydoras, 2 Pictus catfish, 1 Kribensis, 3 Dwarf Gourami females, 1 Dwarf cross Neon Blue Gourami, 1 Dwarf Fire Gourami, 1 Opaline cross Blue Dot Gourami(4" full grown already)...I re-homed the Sun catfish recently and acquired the crossed Gouramis at the same time. I've decided against the Rainbowfish as my LFS has crappy selection and they only have the Neon Dwarf variety. I am thinking I will just add a Honey Gourami female or a Pearl female Gourami? And then my tank is full(in theory after factoring in their adult lengths). I added a 10 gallon TopFin filter for extra cleaning power and will be upgrading my other filter to a 60 gallon AquaClear C4. I have a double air pump but it seemed like the second air pump was creating so much current that I had an extremely cloudy tank, from constantly stirring up particles, etc. So I removed the second air stone from my tank and moved the pump over to the middle of my tank for an even current. I have 2 larger ornaments, a home-made cave, a medium piece of driftwood, 1 Anubis plant, 4 Water Lily(adding more later), and various plastic plants. Anything I should be adding/removing for the benefit of the type of fish I have?

[Viktor Jarikov]

I am no gourami expert. In general, it is not unusual for a fish to take 1-2 weeks to adjust and get stress-free (if everything else is fine).

The tank sounds ok. I'd not remove the air pump unless the stirring blows the fish around and stresses them. Barring this, one cannot have too much aeration. Aeration can be your saving grace when/if something goes awry and things will go wrong for sure at some point. Esp. I see that your filtration safety margin is rather small.

With two filters you should not have any problem with particles. Am I missing something? The filters provide biological as well as mechanical filtration. If you use carbon too, I'd remove it and use the space for bio media.

[echankarsingh]

To be honest, I believe the cloudiness is my own fault. I was re-arranging my tank a few days ago and I had Java moss glued to my driftwood, well not thinking clearly I removed the entire piece of driftwood from the tank as I could not catch my Sun catfish...I left the driftwood out for 20 minutes and then put it back in. Next day, BAM tank is ridiculously cloudy to the point I can't see my Gouramis. Then I was staring at the tank and noticed tons of particles being sucked into the air stones and being shot up to the top, drop back down and then around and up again....I seen tons of particles floating up off my Java moss and being sucked into the current. Which is the only reason I removed the one air pump, to slow the current and let my tank clear medication "catch" the particles. It's slowly clearing up now, one more treatment tonight and it should be almost totally clear tomorrow. I am going to re-arrange my tank agin tonight, to provide better swimming room for my new Large Gourami, and then I will post pictures of my tank for suggestions. To be honest, my 40 gallon filter came with the tank and is at least a couple years old, I definitely need to upgrade it to a filter that will better handle large fish bioload. My 10 gallon filter is kind of crappy too, isn't spitting the water out properly and I just set it up But I need it for filtering anyways not for aeration.

[echankarsingh]

Okay dumb question....I do use carbon(on the suggestion of my LFS)....so what is "biomedia" that I should be using instead??

[Viktor Jarikov]

There are three common types of filtration: mechanical, biological, and chemical. Carbon does the last one but it appears to me that when the source of water is good and the keeping practices are good, carbon is not needed at all. It just takes up the space that is crucial and could be used for bio media, that is the media that hosts beneficial, nitrifying bacteria, such as sponges / pads, bio balls, ceramic rings, etc.