10 & 20 Gallon Stocking

MyraAlam · Nov 2, 2009

Hi everyone,

While sorting through junk the other day, I came across my old 10 and 20 gallon (long) tanks. I was set on getting rid of them but then thought...why not keep a few tanks of tiny fish?

It's been a very long time since I've kept any small, schooling fish (my tinfoils have long since stopped being 'small' LOL) and so would like any tidbits of advice you may have. I'd like fish that school very tightly as I thoroughly enjoy watching schooling behavior...and my tinfoils like to act macho more than anything.

Thus far, I've come up with the following list:

Rummynose Tetra
Lemon Tetra
Ember Tetra
Pygmy Cory

If you have any more suggestions, feel free to tell me! ^_^

If someone could suggest comfortable numbers for whichever tank, that'd be appreciated. Oh, and I've always wanted to keep a dwarf gourami, would that be possible?

I've heard that it's better to keep them singly- is this true?

Wills · Nov 2, 2009

I think I would do the embers and the pygmi cories in the 10g maybe have 7 of each for a good looking tank maybe even 10 of the pygmy cories. And the the rummynose and lemons with a pair of honey gourami and some panda cories for the bottom of the 20g, I say honey rather than dwarfs due to personal preference but dwarfs could work as well the problems with gouramis is when you get 2 males rather than a male and a female males have longer dorsal fins so watch out for that it would be even better if you can get 2 females

Wills

Inchworm · Nov 2, 2009

Hi MyraAlam

A 20 gallon long seems like an excellent tank to keep a lot of little fish in. I've always been fond of that size.

Let me also suggest C. habrosus and C. hastatus. They are the same size as C. pygmaeus and do require being kept in as large a group as you can keep. Along those same lines, some of the aspidoras species would work as well but are often harder to come by.

Honey gouramis are smaller and, in my experience, more peaceful than the dwarf gouramis. For variety of shapes, kuhli loaches are fun, but the do need either sand or very fine gravel because they dig themselves into it. If you have a planted tank, otos would be a nice addition too.

kelly528 · Nov 2, 2009

I vote micro-community:

Honey, sparkling or licorice gourami as centerpiece,
Microrasboras as the schoolers,
Dwarf cories on the bottom.

joel.uejio · Nov 2, 2009

If you wanted to do something more elaborate, you could get a pump and use the 10g as a freshwater sump for the 20g. Then you could do a much larger # of schooling fish since you would actually have 30g of water to work with (from a bio-load standpoint) -- maybe do something like 30 lemon tetras!

MyraAlam · Nov 2, 2009

I love everyone's feedback

here's what I've got so far:

10 Gallon:
8 x Ember Tetras
10 x C. habrosus (I love them, thank you so much Inchworm! I have a feeling they'll be harder to come by but so worth it)

20 Gallon:
6 x lemon tetra
6 x rummynose tetra
6 x panda cories

The reason I wanted a dwarf gourami was for the males' amazing coloring, I'm a sucker for colorful fish.

I'd have liked to keep a single male but I'm guessing that's not such a good idea, right? And I've only heard horror stories when it comes to mixing the males and females, so I wouldn't want to "try it out" either...

I was also wondering if there are any other cory options available apart from the pandas. Adolfi is a big favorite of mine but I'm not sure if they would be suited for this tank. (Inchworm help me out here :lol:

)

Amberleaf · Nov 3, 2009

If I were you, I'd get neon tetras! ^^; They're pwettyies.... <3 *OR* some WCMM, of course.

^^; 8D.

scoliofish · Nov 23, 2009

you can keep one male dwarf gorami alone or have one male and two or more females i did this and there were no casualties exept the femails died because of the dreaded uncurable gorami desease.