the profile at liveaquaria says that when they are kept in a school the tank should have a minimum length of 4'. i know not all info is correct (thats why we have these forums ) so what id like to know is would a 36" length tank be ok for a school? id probably only get 3 and if i felt like i had the money and really liked them after a while i might up that to 6. i have a 55 gallon that is 48" but i plan to put a divider on one end to split it at 36"/12", the 1' would be a betta/african dwarf frog/shrimp tank and the rest of it would be a peaceful community tank. i am pretty set on doing that so this is sort of a make or brake thing with me, i want to be a responsible fish keeper so if i really shouldnt keep a school of them in a 36" tank let me. if it helps to know ~ it will be well planted with plenty of bogwood.

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_di...amp;pcatid=1053

I own a school of 3 adult males and IMO adults need at least a 4' tank. When you get them they are only around 2" long normally and don't look like much a smaller tank is fine. My are now 3.5-4" long and at least 2" tall and are beautiful when they display in the evening and very fun to watch. They are very active swimmers and use every bit of space in my 55gal. A very friendly fish too. Are you planning on ordering them on-line?

In my opinion they should be fine in a 3' tank - depending on the volume and rest of your planned stocking? They are far less manic and active than the red rainbows. Reds I would not keep in anything less than 4'. I have tried and they only seemed stressed.

ive now got 5 in my 75 gallon (4 foot) and they seem very happy. I bought them pretty big (about 3.5 - 4inches) and they are never hurting for swimming space (although the bigger 2 males occasionally chase the smaller 2)

Not sure id be comfortable with a group of adults in a 3 footer. They are great fish though. If i do a bigger commnity at some point, i will have a school of at least a dozen juveniles.

lovely fish i wold say bare minuim 3 foot for 4, ive got some in a 4' with quite a strong current and large open space and they still seem a bit cramped
the 8 in the 4ft 4 males and 4 females have bread many of occasions most of the time with out me knowing.
Jonny

the rest of the stocking will be a few catfish on the bottom, banjo cats and corys, and as for swimmers ~ i want maybe two schools of tetras, perhaps x-rays and something else like rummy nose, also i want a school of 6 marbled hatched fish on the surface. there might be others but thats pretty much all iv got planned right now apart from shrimp. i wanted to keep it simple but elegant. so do you think i should get just one? im ok with that, i really wanted a school but even one will be nice. it would create a nice focal point of singular color as contrast with all the other color since mentally it is only one fish compared to all the schools around it.

a 3ft x14inx18in high tank is fine for adult rainbowfish. You should keep a group of at least 4 (preferably 6) to stop the dominant male from bullying the smaller males. Don't keep them with rummynose or hatchetfish. They will probably eat the rummynose and take all the food so the hatchets starve.

yikes! well no rainbows then. i am trying to design a tank that is quite purely a peaceful community. aggression like that takes them off the list of possible inhabitants. thanks for the heads up. i think im pretty sure this is going to work out after all with getting the 55 set up instead of a 30ish gallon. with the divider in there it does save on space and will not be so big its cumbersome if i need to move it in the near future.

perhaps yall can help me stock it so it is a peaceful community and i dont make a mistake and get any bullies. the absolute musts are a school (about 6 - 9 fish) of marbled hatchets, x-ray tetras, and preferably true rummy nose. will those 3 work well together? other options iv considered are zebra danios and black neons. neon tetras are a maybe but i am really afraid of neon tetra disease. id prefer to avoid that. to generalize im looking for fish that wolnt get bigger than 4" (preferably only 2"ish like noens and such), are social, peaceful, at least semi active, and have a nice coloration to them (nice doesnt mean flashy like neons, it can just be attractive like honey gouramis). any ideas? im open to a lot even though it might not sound like it.

rainbows aren't outwardly agressive but big rainbows do eat small fish and big boesemani can be bullies.
I wouldn't bother about danios but there are numerous tetras that are nice. Black or red phantom, rosy, neons or cardinals, splashing tetras, hockeystick or black neon, Glo-light & diamond tetras are all quite nice.
Neon tetra disease is quite uncommon, however all tetras are prone to bacterial infections that can wipe out the entire tank very quickly. If you quarantine any new fishes for a couple of weeks then you will prevent these types of infections getting into your main display tank. Also avoid buying fish that have just come in. Only buy fish that have been at the LFS for at least a week. If you can, go and check on the fish each day during that time and see if any die. If any of them do die then don't buy them until they get more in, or they haven't had any losses for at least a week. Also look to see if any of the fishes in the tank are pale or have white mouths, these are indications of potential diseases.
If you check out the fish first and don't buy anything from a tank that has had a dead fish in it during the last week, then you shouldn't have any real problems with diseases like bacterial infections.

Cherry, checkered & ruby barbs are nice and peaceful. There are also a few types of small African barb like the 5 or 6 lined barbs. these can be hard to find but usually do well. There are different rasboras like emerald eye, redline & fire rasboras that are nice.

You could get some Melanotaenia praecox (neon dwarf rainbow) they should be fine with tetras. Other rainbowfish include M. papuae, maccullochi, sexlineata & exquisita. There are also blue-eye rainbows like Pseudomugil furcatus, gertrudae, & signifer and Rhadinocentrus ornatus if you can find them.

http://members.optushome.com.au/chelmon/Melano.htm

There are different Betta species like Betta imbellis & coccinea or sparkling, licorice, honey dwarf & indian banded gouramis.

Crikey well my Boesmani rainbows have never aggressively chased or eaten any of my other smaller fish. And in one of my previous tanks I did actually keep them with Rummynose tetras and hatchet fish! that was a 3ft tank btw.
Even in my current tank my entire group of males are probably the most peaceful fish in my tanks!

And persoanally I've twice tried Melanotaenia praecox and over a period of a few months, all died for no apparant reason (no other fish died). So I gave up on them.

So those are just my observations of keeping them for several years in different setups and tanks.

wow! thats a lot of fish! you've got a good number listed that iv never even heard of. thanks and if Bloo has kept them peacefully then ill consider putting them back on the list of potential inhabitants; though i am very skittish to do that since i really was hoping to get a tank of fish that pretty much absolutely will not be aggressive. i will look into those other more peaceful rainbows, i only chose boesemani because i thought they were the most beautiful, but then again it could have just been the specific pictures i was looking at and if i were to see them in person i would realize that plenty of the other rainbows are quite good looking too.

Heres a pic of my rainbows who have been living with adult rummy nosed tetras for over a year now. That said I wouldn't trust them with any fish under 2" or with long fins. They aren't very good examples of the fish. Two came from petco the smaller one came from a much nicer privately own store. They only turn that dark blue when they are excited or figuring out dominance. In the evening they start displaying to each other. Most of the time they are fine, but occasionally one will bullying another. Also they eat like pigs and always eat like they are starving. Mine make big splashes when they eat and aren't against jumping to get their food.

they are pretty but i think im going to pass if they are even the slightest bit aggressive. i have had a bad experience in the past with aggressive fish (my baby senegal viciously attacked my gorgeous halfmoon betta and it tore my heart out to see it, the betta is still alive though with most of his fins still intact he presently is being treated with indian almond leaf extract) so im setting up this tank as a purely peaceful aquarium.

i talked with a friend of mine from highschool who has been keeping fish forever and works at a lfs and gave me a lot of other good info on how to set up my planted tank. im going to use a reverse osmosis filter to prepare water in a separate designated container and then use buffers to maintain the pH and other parameters. i want to do a black water tank, i.e. keep the tannis from driftwood in there and maybe later as that starts to leave begin dosing with artificial blackwater stuff, so i will probably use only a minimal amount of filtration - probably my aquaclear 20 and just fill the basket with sponges for added bacterial filtration - and let the plants do the rest of the work along with a weekly water change. right now my stocking list - which might be prone to change in the future - is a school of 3 banjo catfish, 5ish cory cats, 6+ marbled hatchets, 8+ true rummy nose tetras, 8+ x-ray tetras, a honey gourami (those arent aggressive are they?), and maybe a halfbanded spiny eel if it is determined that he wolnt eat my fish; and a bunch of different types of freshwater shrimp like ghosts, cherry, crystal reds, amanos, and bamboo. i plan to add them slowly and in an appropriate manner as my tank ages and matures to ensure that some of the more sensitive ones like filter feeder shrimp have plenty of microscopic organisms to eat plant stocking will total to about 16 different plants. what do yall think about it? sound good or are there any potential down falls yall might see that i should make adjustments to avoid?

This post has been edited by Starfishpower: Jun 19 2008, 04:05 AM

Honey dwarf gouramis are very peaceful and won't cause any problems.
Rainbowfish are nowhere near as aggressive as a birchir. Birchis are predators that eat fish. rainbows will try to eat small things but so do most fish. Bullying is the most common problem with big males especially boesemani and G. incisus.
However since you are going for the soft acid water tank you are probably better off avoiding most of the rainbows anyway as they prefer neutral to slightly alkaline water with some hardness. You could look at the blue-eye rainbows (Pseudomguil gertrudae) and Iriatherina werneri. They will be fine with tetras in soft acid water.

You can use peat to release tannins into the water. Just have some in a fine mesh net (stocking) and have it in the filter. It will drop the PH and turn the water brown.
Have a couple of sponges in the filter and don't bother about carbon or anything else. The sponges will trap the dirt and hold bacteria. Then you can have some peat on top if you like.

Spiny nose eels are normally fine.

I would only add a couple of species of shrimp. Too many can just look wrong. Maybe get 2 or 3 species that look different.

16species of plant in a small tank can look odd. It becomes too jumbled and doesn't look natural. Having fewer species but in larger clumps/clusters can be more effective. Try to get different coloured plants if possible. Then have the different colours/shades next to each other for contrast. And try to spread out plants that resemble each other. ie: if you get 2 types of vallis have one species on each side of the tank.

ok. and i like your idea on the plants. it will look more natural and i might even go for a specific theme with them, like an amazon river basin setup or something. i appreciate the artistic look of these things. thats actually one of the reasons i like the black water idea with brightly coloured fish. the brown of the water brings the viewer's attention to the glimmering flashes of the fish since the two contrast each other ~ it is more pleasing to the eye to look at pretty fish than dirty water reducing the number of different types of shrimps is an interesting comment from an artistic perspective. i hadnt really thought that would happen. thanks for the comment, ill look into it. i definitely want ghost shrimp if no other reason than that they swim. thats cool to see one flitter across the tank compared to all the others that simply roam around. ghosts and filter fish might complement each other nicely by being visually tied together through there similar motions - the ghosts use there underside finer-ets to propel themselves and filters use a similar motion when feeding. hey thats a good complement, i like it ill check out those rainbows you mentioned but at this point what i am envisioning is quite nice and i think i might leave it just the way it is. this way also i might even have the option to put a betta in there - with the absence of rainbows, i get the impression the would love to nip up slow moving trailing fins like most commonly sold bettas do. and that would be nice if i could not divide my tank up like im planning but i really have the feeling that in the future i will be very glad that i did just in case a betta wouldnt work out in there and it will give me more options. plus the community side is still plenty big enough as a decent size set up by itself, 41 gallons i think is what i figured out it will be, something like that anyway.

This post has been edited by Starfishpower: Jun 19 2008, 04:49 AM