Centerpeice fish ideas for community tank

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Chuunofish

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The saga of the dying gouramus is reaching its end after Epsom salts, general tonics and a variety of parasite and bacterial treatments, it looks like my journey with keeping honey and pearl gourami is over. In total. 6 fish have been lost to an unidentified disease or parasite.

All other fish are flourishing over the last 6 weeks we have 2 new baby otos and 4 baby zebra danios. Water parameters are all good, amm, nitrite and nitrate all 0, kh at 4, ph 7. Achieved by changing 20% RO water changes per week and remineralising with marin tropic. Temperature is 27.4C. Filtration is internal juwel bioflow L and oase biomaster 600 canister filter. I am also using a juwel oxygen attachment for oxygenation. There is moderate planting.

The tank is 350ltr and currently is home to a galaxy pieco, 7 otos, 6 zebra danio (+4 juveniles), 10 rummynose tetra and 8 serpae tetra. I am looking for ideas for a pair of centre piece fish which are suited to these parameters.

Thanks in advance
 
hm... Bolivian Ram, perhaps?

But, be sure whatever pathogen that caused the fish deaths is gone.
 
Awwwh no. Pearl or Honey Gouraimis are currently in pole position for centrepiece fish in our soon come tank after reading non stop Dwarf Gourami bad news. Nooooooooo.
 
Awwwh no. Pearl or Honey Gouraimis are currently in pole position for centrepiece fish in our soon come tank after reading non stop Dwarf Gourami bad news. Nooooooooo.
I do not believe this is a common regular occurrence. Not for these species normally.
 
I do not believe this is a common regular occurrence. Not for these species normally.
Theyre about 60 miles away. Chance of coming from similar breeders/suppliers should be small but I’m as im a week or so away from cycling tank anyway due to decorating house the odds are further reduced. Hopefully.
It’s not nice to read about fish dying. My uneducated steps back into the hobby last time around still upset me.
 
You have two shoaling species in this tank which really should not be combined with sedate fish like cichlids or gourami. These are the Zebra Danio, because of their very active swimming style, and the Serpae Tetra because of their fin nipping. Putting a sedate fish in front of these fellows is like waving a red flag in front of a bull, seriously. And it is not far off the mark to ponder if this may not have been part of the issue with the gourami deaths. Just having the Serpaes inthe tank means stress to the gourami, which does not have to be physical; fish release chemical signals, phermones which others in the species read, and allomones which other species read, and these if aggressive can be just as stressful as physical nips. And stress is the direct cause of 95% of all aquarium fish disease.

I cannot think of any "cnetrepiece" that would not find life difficult with these fish, so a better option would be looking for other shoaling species that are also active (but not nippy) so all the activity will help out in the long run.
 
You have two shoaling species in this tank which really should not be combined with sedate fish like cichlids or gourami. These are the Zebra Danio, because of their very active swimming style, and the Serpae Tetra because of their fin nipping. Putting a sedate fish in front of these fellows is like waving a red flag in front of a bull, seriously. And it is not far off the mark to ponder if this may not have been part of the issue with the gourami deaths. Just having the Serpaes inthe tank means stress to the gourami, which does not have to be physical; fish release chemical signals, phermones which others in the species read, and allomones which other species read, and these if aggressive can be just as stressful as physical nips. And stress is the direct cause of 95% of all aquarium fish disease.

I cannot think of any "cnetrepiece" that would not find life difficult with these fish, so a better option would be looking for other shoaling species that are also active (but not nippy) so all the activity will help out in the long run.


Interestingly the serpae have never been seen harassing the gouramis and the danios have always pretty much stayed away from the gouramis. Also did a ton of research prior to selecting species and general consensus was they would be OK together so thinking of giving up on the advice from youtubers, forums and various aquatic shop sites as I seem to get the opposite results when it comes to gouramis, all other advice has been spot on.
 
You have two shoaling species in this tank which really should not be combined with sedate fish like cichlids or gourami. These are the Zebra Danio, because of their very active swimming style, and the Serpae Tetra because of their fin nipping. Putting a sedate fish in front of these fellows is like waving a red flag in front of a bull, seriously. And it is not far off the mark to ponder if this may not have been part of the issue with the gourami deaths. Just having the Serpaes inthe tank means stress to the gourami, which does not have to be physical; fish release chemical signals, phermones which others in the species read, and allomones which other species read, and these if aggressive can be just as stressful as physical nips. And stress is the direct cause of 95% of all aquarium fish disease.

I cannot think of any "cnetrepiece" that would not find life difficult with these fish, so a better option would be looking for other shoaling species that are also active (but not nippy) so all the activity will help out in the long run.
Thanks for the advice after consultation with my best LFS my current thinking is it was a parasite/bacterial infection that spread from a red honey gourami to a pearl and progressively over a few months was passed from fish to fish, some of the latter deaths actually occurred in a hospital tank whilst the gouramis were isolated from all the other fish
 
Awwwh no. Pearl or Honey Gouraimis are currently in pole position for centrepiece fish in our soon come tank after reading non stop Dwarf Gourami bad news. Nooooooooo.
I would go for the pearls only, the red honeys are also a dwarf species and I have been told are.more susceptible to disease or parasites which is I think was transferred to the pearls.
 
Interestingly the serpae have never been seen harassing the gouramis and the danios have always pretty much stayed away from the gouramis. Also did a ton of research prior to selecting species and general consensus was they would be OK together so thinking of giving up on the advice from youtubers, forums and various aquatic shop sites as I seem to get the opposite results when it comes to gouramis, all other advice has been spot on.

I know it seems like I am just arguing when I continually counter things like this, but it needs to be said or other less experienced members can be misled, and failures and dying fish can cause new aquarists to give up, when it need not be the case.

None of us can ever say that "x" has not done this or that, just because we do not think we have seen it. Fish communicate visually, physically, but also chemically by pheromones and allomones. We cannot see the latter, but a fish like the Serpae Tetra sending out aggressive signals is just as stressful to the target fish as is physical fin nipping. And Serpae are notorious for this. Never combine them with sedate or long-fin fish. And they must be in a group of 8 (OK here on that) or preferably more to further inhibit their nipping.

As for the so-called advice on the internet, most of it is absolute nonsense. There are those who do have the knowledge through study and research to provide reliable advice, but the majority do not. Knowing the source is key to being able to trust the advice. And anyone promoting products is likely getting paid for marketing or selling. A few weeks back someone posted a video that was intended to give "the" way to handle ich, using a product called Ich-X. I watched the video, and it turned out that the manufacturers of Ich-X were subsidizing the video, paying this "expert" to promote their product. Ich-X is highly toxic, it contains malachite green (difficult for fish like characins and cories in particular) which is carcinogenic to humans, and formaldehyde which is even more deadly to fish. This shows just how unreliable most of this garbage is.
 

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