How many clowns?

[tigershark]

I just got my 60 Gal tank up last weekend, it has since cycled and I added 3 false percs last nite. They are all very small, maybe an inch in length but it seems that one doesnt like another one very much. One is a little aggressive. Could I add another 1 or 2 clowns to make it more of a school of them and would the aggressive one stop picking on the others if there were more around? Or is that usually not successful?

 

[saltyrich]

You could, but you are in danger of having a tank with nothing in it but percs. If that is what you want, you could add a couple more.

 

[slick]

How did your tank cycle in just a week? Also adding 3 fish all at once is not a good idea.

 

[saltyrich]

Great point slick. Sorry I missed that. There are ways to quick cycle a tank, but a week is a little fast IMO also. It may be in your best interest to take some of those percs back. When adding fish to a new tank, it is important to do it slowly so that your system can adjust to the bioload increases. In the beginning, I add one fish per month in order for the tank to adjust.

 

[tigershark]

Now that I think about it, maybe I should have thrown some shrimp in the tank and let it cycle that way. But I ordered 45 LBS of LR 1.5 weeks before I setup my tank, and let it cure in a bucket for that time. Then I moved into my house last weekend and during the move my LR sat our for a few hours and had a little bit of die off. I put it in the tank, watched the ammonia go up then to 0, Nitrites to 0, and Nitrates to about 5ppm. I believe there is a lot of bacteria left on my LR and hopefully it will be enough to handle the fish. I will check all my levels when I get home in 2 hours. If I see them get too high, I will do a partial water change. I also have 20LBS of the packaged LS that I am going to add to help boost up the bacteria level in my tank. So I think things should be ok with the water and I'll wait on getting more fish for a couple weeks until my tank adjusts. Thanks for the responses!