Hello everyone!
I’m setting up my first aquarium. My intention is to keep a Betta fish. My aquarium is a 30×30×30 cm cube (27 L). The substrate I used is a fertile substrate, along with a piece of driftwood and a small plant (whose name I forgot). I plan to add more plants in the future, but I’ve been buying things little by little so it doesn’t weigh too much on my budget. I want it to be heavily planted.
I asked Gemini some questions, and it recommended keeping the Betta with two Amano shrimp (for algae control and mid-water cleaning) and five dwarf Corydoras (for bottom cleaning). What do you think about this? Is it correct? Do you have any tips for my aquarium?
For now, it’s only partially set up and running with the filter on, so the water doesn’t get dirty. I’ve already ordered all the other necessary items from Shopee and I’m waiting for them to arrive (I’ll leave photos here of the things I bought). In the filter, I’m using filter floss, the sponge that comes with the filter, biological media, and activated carbon. There used to be more filter floss in the filter, but for some reason it was making an unbearable noise, so I had to remove the excess and leave everything to one side.
I’m open to tips and advice!
https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1po1un0
Posted by naluibarb
1 Comment
The only thing cleaning the aquarium is you not any other animals you keep. The only thing Corydoras or amanos would really do is eat food that falls to the bottom which with one Betta it’s not hard to feed them directly and prevent anything from reaching the bottom.
When you add more animals you increase the total amount of food you add to the system which increases the overall waste burden making it more difficult to manage.
Personally I think this setup is too small for Corydoras but I’ve never kept them so I’m not sure entirely, amanos I think would be fine if you want to keep them (but again they won’t really “clean” for you). Though you should wait until the system is established before adding in any shrimp as they like to eat microorganisms which need time to grow in number. ( I think like 6 months? But it’s been a while since I’ve kept shrimp)
You may have already done this but the most important thing is to read about the nitrogen cycle which is essentially how toxic fish waste is removed from the water by beneficial bacteria. You can either start this before adding the fish or after but either way please do some research about it and watch some videos as it is important to understand.