A Question Of Compatability

[unionman125]

I have finaly gotten my 75 gallon fully cycled. It took my the better part of a year, because i kept the number and size of fish quite small, slowly adding more and larger fish as the water condition stabalized. My tank was thus well established with 7 red nosed tetras, a sailfin plec, one clown plec, one adult zebra dannio (i had moved him from the 10 gal.) and one geophagus. I have recently [just yesterday] added 3 more juvenile zebra dannios and a juvenile (2.5 inch) blood parrot. A few points for discussion:​

- do parrots become more aggressive with age... i.e. will it bother my tetras when it gets bigger?

- should i have more dannios.... i.e. are 4 enough for them to shoal properly?

- how much more bio-mass can my 75 gal. handle?

- are parrot's large waste producers?

- would a few more clown plecs and a couple of ghost shrimp be approprate tank mates?

As always thanks for your advice and lively discussion.

 

[Teelie]

- do parrots become more aggressive with age... i.e. will it bother my tetras when it gets bigger?

Yes, they do. Quite aggressive in many cases.

- should i have more dannios.... i.e. are 4 enough for them to shoal properly?

5 is a minimum but the more, the better.

- how much more bio-mass can my 75 gal. handle?

How much it can handle largely depends on how much filtration and maintanence you do on it. There's no simple answer for this one. The higher the filtration and maintanence, the more it can take obviously however.

- are parrot's large waste producers?

I'm not positive on this but I believe they are.

- would a few more clown plecs and a couple of ghost shrimp be approprate tank mates?

Clown Plecs tend to be territorial but so long as there are enough hideouts and space for them, you might be able to do three or four, and the shrimp would make better meals than mates with the Parrot and some of the other fish.

Additionally, the Sailfin will grow large, as much as 2 feet, the geophagus I doubt is compatible with your other fish either. You might need to move those two out.

 

[sylvia]

do parrots become more aggressive with age... i.e. will it bother my tetras when it gets bigger? - Ask in the hybrids section. I have no eprsonal experience with them. Having said that, I have heard it go both ways and would not be too sure about keeping them with small tetras or the danios anyway because it could probably eat them once fully grown.

- should i have more dannios.... i.e. are 4 enough for them to shoal properly? - More is always better with danios. A group of 7 or so would be good.

- how much more bio-mass can my 75 gal. handle? - Difficult question to answer as I couldn't give you a measurement or anything. What you can do to give you an diea is, first, use the inch per gallon guideline (using adult size) and, then, if you are close to fully stocked, let everything grow out, monitoring nitrAte levels as you go. Once everything is mature, if a weekly water change is enough to keep nitrAtes below 20ppm, you still have of room for more fish BUT don't forget to consider aggression, physical space and behaviour when choosing frther tankmates.

- are parrot's large waste producers? - HUGE waste producers.

- would a few more clown plecs and a couple of ghost shrimp be approprate tank mates? - Clown plecs would be ok but the ghost shrimp are going to get eaten eventualy. The geophagus probably isn't a good choice for your tank though.

edit: you beat me to it

 

[freddyk]

Given that none of the other fish are bottom dwellers I'd imagine the Geophagus would do fine in this tank, given that it is decorated suitably for it, but it's good to know what type of Geo we're looking at because some get pretty huge - too big for this setup. Parrot cichlids get very large given the opportunity and in turn messy, and tend to do fine with tetra's since their deformities makes them pretty lousy hunters.

 

[sylvia]

I was more concerned about the geo and parrot disliking each other actualy. Though knowing what kind of geo you have is, of course, crucial.

 

[unionman125]

Sorry. It's a Geophagus Jurupari...

So far the Parrott has not bothered the Geo -they are about the same size and the Geo was there for about 2 months before the parott showed up. If the parrot gets feisty, i could always bring him back to my LFS. But Its only been 3 days.