46 Gallon Tank Options

[mandersen]

I recently purchased a 46 gallon bow front aquarium and I'm looking for some good ideas about what to put in it. It's 21" tall, 36" long and varies from 12-16" deep with it being 16" at the middle and 12" on the ends. I really like Clown Loaches, and I'm kind of looking to do all fish from similar regions, so I was thinking some clown loaches, I'd love to do bala sharks, zebra danios, rasbora and maybe 3 gourami's, but after researching some things, I'm fairly certain that I don't have the space for that. I think I can have fish up to 9" long, and I would think that most loaches and bala's wouldn't get much bigger than that, but I don't have the space to have multiple bala's and loaches. I've also considered a cichlid based tank, but I haven't had fish in years and didn't know if that was really smart to try. It would have to be some of the smaller cichlids, maybe kribs and/or labs. Any ideas from experienced aquariasts?

 

[minxfishy]

I have to say that unfortunately your tank is not going to be big enough for the bala's or the clown loaches, both reach large proportions and required 100+ gallon tanks, like to be in large groups also, so unless you could upgrade to a much larger tank in the near future I would say dont do it

Dwarf cichlids are a good choice, personal favoutires being german blue rams and bolivian rams, you could have a couple of pairs in this size tank, each fish requiring 10g or 20g a pair. Apisto's would also be a good choice, although Ive no personal experience of them, again like rams need the same amount of space. Kribensis are quite aggressive, particularly when spawning, so I think there are only certain species reommmended to be kept with them, ask more about those in the African Cichlid section of the forum for more help on those.

But with the SA cichlids, a nice large shoal of some tetras, rasboras or the danios would be great with them

 

[waterdrop]

Hi mandersen and welcome to the forum,

Do you have any plans to do a fishless cycle? There are pinned articles at the top of the forum that explain the nitrogen cycle and why it is so important to the hobby.

Doing a fishless cycle to prepare the biofilter for fish can take a couple of months (there are also a couple of possibilities like getting mature filter media or getting lucky with a refridgerated bacterial starter that can sometimes speed this up) and during that time you can have lots of discussions on the forum about the right fish for your tank.

~~waterdrop~~