baos

Ok, I've setup a 90g El natural aquarium.

But first I should let you know I had a fire at my place and lost 90% of my fish. Everything salvageable got compressed into a 10g tank which is stacks of plant, corydoras sterbai, and some baby bristlenose plecos. They also got to swim with some drywall and whatnot. Other than that everything seems healthy. they survived days of neglect where people told me my fish were dead and when I was allowed in on a 1/2 hour visit I found two small tanks alive and took what I could.

I used black dirt from the local store which contains organic matter and no labeled nutrients. I mixed the dirt with some fine silica sand and Caribbean live sand (caribsea aragonite) As recommended by my fish store which doesn't carry crushed coral lately. I have 5 tetras (one died) that have been in the 90g aquarium for a few days. Two baby bristlenose plecos for 2 days. And the corydoras sterbai just aren't getting along with the tank. Two have had trouble swimming or staying right side up. Two others did better but after a day showed similar problems. One died possibly from not being able to swim to the top for oxygen. a trip back to the 10g tank seems to cure them. Oh and my substrate bubbles once in a while. But 5 tetras have had no issues from the first day.

If I need to do a complete teardown of the tank and use different soil, let me know. I used a specific sand to cover the substrate which was screened to be about 1-2mm in size and seems to allow decent water movement through. It's about 1.5" of black dirt and 1" of sand. The soil has also made the water a bit cloudy but seems to be clearing up in recent days with some water changes.