Wish List & Plans

Since I've got nothing else to do on vacation I figured I'd start a wish list, those things I want but am in no real hurry to get. I'll also go over my plans for the tank.

Plans:
1) Background
Last week while holding a crying five week old I came to the realization that my wife was right, my tank would look better with a background. I'd left one off because I thought I'd love to look at my tank from both sides, from my den and from the family room/dining room side. So far all my tank enjoyment looking has been from the family room side only. Given that I put up a piece of black cloth on the den side. The tank looked fantastic, sorry for the lack of a good picture. Unfortunately the tape I used to hold it up wouldn't last, with or without a toddler pulling on it. When I get back I want to find a better way to secure it up.

2) Plants
More of them. A nice thing about the background is I don't have to worry about cluttering up my view from the den side so I'm thinking about re-aquascaping things. I can pile my tall plants along the back of the tank and push my shorter ones to the front. I still need quite a few more tall plants though. I really don't have much taking up the higher portions of the water column.

3) Fish
So long as everyone survives vacation I'm going to start stocking my tank up. My plans right now are to add on neons until I get to about six to eight. After that I'll slow down, maybe only buy a neon at a time until I hit my goal of a dozen. At the same time as I'm slowing on the neons I'm going to start getting some rummy-nosed tetras. Once I have all eight of them I'm going to sit on things for a while, make sure everything's steady. If everything looks good I'm going to start on my panda corys. Nice and slow to start, one or two at a time. The final big addition will be the BIG addition. I'm going to save up the cash to buy an entire school of serpaes in one shot. Eight to ten in a go. Once that's done my big species should be taken care of. A dozen neons, eight rummys, eight corys, ten serpaes, and the three platys. That's 41 fish. I'm rethinking the rasboras, I don't think there will be enough room for them in a large enough school. After that it's the german blue ram and the red tailed black shark. I'm doing them both at the same time in the hopes of preventing them from fighting. They'll both be new to the tank at the same time and hopefully pick out their own territories without too much fighting. After that I'm officially done. I say officially because I'm probably not going to leave well enough alone. So long as everything seems to be ok I will likely monkey with things a bit. I would like to get some more upper level swimming fish but both the ones I like could be problematic. A dwarf gourami is probably a bad idea, but so might the guppies I wanna try. The only thing that worries me about the guppies are the serpaes. I'm hopefully that in such a large school of them, 10, the serpaes will behave. The only way to find out how they'll do is to throw them in together and see what happens. I think the large school of serpaes should keep their nippiness in check and let the guppies swim in peace.

4) Biomedia
More of it. I've got a 50 gallon pack of biomedia in my filter right now but I want to get some more. I know I'll have more tanks in the future and I'd like to have enough extra to seed new tanks later.

5) Peat
I'm seriously considering using peat in one compartment of my filter in order to soften the water. I'm not sure if I want the tea colored water but I've also heard that carbon can take the color out. I've got some more research to do on this but it's something I'm thinking about.

Wish List:

1) UV Sterilizer.
One day I'd love to keep a dwarf gourami, in fact I'd love a mated pair that could make more little dwarf gouramis. From what I've read they are highly susceptible to bacterial infections. On top of that just for the health of my fish and to get rid of algae in the water I'd like to get one of these. Until I've got $60 bucks free and no more fish or decor to buy it'll have to wait though.

2) Plant Blub
I want to get a blub for my light fixture that will support plant growth. I want to plant my tank one day but that's way down the road once I get all the fish I want and I'm happy with how things are going.

3) CO2 Injection
Once I start planting my tank I want to look into injecting CO2 to help the plants. Probably start with just a yeast reactor, not a pressurized tank.

4) More Tanks
Duh. Start off with a 5 gallon tank at work for a betta, then a 3 gallon at home for some shrimp. A 20 gallon for that stand I built and one day a monster salt water tank. Some day.