Any Suggestions Would Be Great.......

[stucolls]

Setting up my 183 litre tank next week and wondered if this stocking would work......
existing fish:
6 golden barbs
3 ottos
2 female play
1 m 1 f dalmation molly
16 platy fry
2 albino cory
3 peppered cory
1 rtbs.

I want too add the following.........

2 angels (1m1f)
5 bosemani rainbow
6 cories (3albinos 3pandas)
2 female dalmation mollies
1 male platy
2 bn plecs or 4 pitbull plecs.

so what do you reckon guys, compatability? overstocking?
please make some suggestions on this one before I make a fool of myself and divce in too the deep end

Stu

 

[kribensis12]

What are the dimension's? Red Tail Black sharks are the best to keep with teh fish you already ahve, let alone the one's your getting! It sound'ss like the tank would be over stocked, but im not sure. Also, how do you plan on sexing the angel's?

 

[stucolls]

the tank is 60inchs long 12 wide and 15.5 tall, long and thin really.
No idea on sexing the angels but I wanted to get a breeding pair from somewhere.

Not sure I understand your comment about the red tail? do you mean it wont do well with the fish I plan to get?
cheers for the reply

 

[merry78]

the angels will eat your platy fry.....

apart from that, you're on the high end of stocking, but overfiltration and lots of plants should let you get away with it.

 

[Davo86]

Not sure I understand your comment about the red tail? do you mean it wont do well with the fish I plan to get?
cheers for the reply

I think what he was trying to say was that a fully mature RTB sharks needs around a 55G
when fully grown they will generally patrol the bottom level of the tank, and so he may start to pick on the corydoras and many of your smaller fish.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Setting up my 183 litre tank next week and wondered if this stocking would work......
existing fish:
6 golden barbs
3 ottos
2 female play
1 m 1 f dalmation molly
16 platy fry
2 albino cory
3 peppered cory
1 rtbs.

I want too add the following.........

2 angels (1m1f)
5 bosemani rainbow
6 cories (3albinos 3pandas)
2 female dalmation mollies
1 male platy
2 bn plecs or 4 pitbull plecs.

so what do you reckon guys, compatability? overstocking?
please make some suggestions on this one before I make a fool of myself and divce in too the deep end

Stu

The RTBS may not get along with the angels, there could be territorial disputes between the two, plus if you get a male and female angelfish they may at some point decide to pair up for breeding and if they do that they will become very agressive and territorial towards all the other fish in the tank.

Common livebearers like mollys, guppys and platys need to be in at least trio's (as they are sociable fish with their own kind) and when kept in mixed gender groups you should have at least 2-3females per male. So you need to get another 1-2females with your mollys, if you are getting another platy which is a male i would personally advise getting another female two- 3 females per male is better than 2 even though 2females per male is acceptable.

At least one more albino cory would be good, although with corys the more the better really- with the panda's it would probably be better to start out with 5 of them since panda corys can be quite difficult to successfully acclimatise in the long term to new tanks and not all of them may survive so its better to start out with a decent number of them just in case. Ideally you should opt for a sand fine substrate as the corys and RTBS will appreiciate it the most over gravel (if you have your heart set on gravel though you should only get smooth rounded gravel, not rough or sharp gravel)- the sand in particular will allow the corys to feed more naturally and they will be less likely to get bacterial infections in their barbels because sand substrates generally stay cleaner etc.
Sand is also good if you have fish which produce a lot of waste like pleco's since their poop will not mix in with the sand, but rather it will sit on top of it where it can then be pushed along into the filter by the water flow- gravel substrates need very regular cleaning with plecos since their poop just falls inbetween the gravel where it just sits there and rots. Plants also seem to grow better in sand too; if you do get sand make sure you don't use marine/coral sand or stuff like builders sand- childrens playsand and pool/blasting/silica sand are fine though, although make sure you wash the sand thoroughly in plain water before you put it into the tank as otherwise all the dust in it could make the tank very cloudy for days on end etc.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

looks ok to me. I wouldnt keep the RTBS and I also wouldn't keep the livebearers unless you are going to be rehoming the fry.

Your tank isn't really tall enough for angels I'm afraid. Assuming it is 15.5" tall it will most like have 1-2" from the top with no water then 1-2" of substrate so you will only end up with about 10-12" of depth. It doesnt take long for angels to grow and this is not going to give them a great deal of room to move up and down (if any). It sucks (I know because I really wanted angels in my planted tank but its only 15" tall as well). An good alternative would be a pair of blue rams or krib's.

Your list:
6 golden barbs
2 angels (1m1f)
5 bosemani rainbow

3 ottos
2 bn plecs or 4 pitbull plecs.
5 albino cory
3 panda Cory
3 peppered cory
1 rtbs.


3 female dalmation mollies
1 male dalmation molly
2 female platy
1 male platy
16 platy fry

What I (personally) would go for:
6 Golden Barbs
Pair of Blue Rams
6 Bosman Rainbows
3 Platy's (2 female, 1 male)
3 Mollys (2 female, 1 male)
5 pepper corys
5 albino corys
3 otos
Cherry Shrimp/Crystal Red shrimp/Bumblebee shrimp/etc.

Though if it was really personally I would get rid of all the livebearers because I dont like them

 

[stucolls]

never really thought about shrimps they look so weird lol might go down that route though, have had rams before, beautiful fish so may well go there instead of the angels.

Thanks so much for everyones suggestions, im also now gonna go for play sand rather than the box of gravel I have in the shed!!!

 

[xxBarneyxx]

I had never kept shrimp before but got a dozen cherry shrimp for my planted tank. This dozen is now about 300 and they really do add another element to the tank

If I set more FW tanks up in the future with shrimp safe fish I will definetly add them again.