Hello! Looking For Stocking Advice

[Critter7204]

First time poster, Long time fish keeper

I have been around aquariums/ponds since I was young and have been personally tending to my gilled friends needs for about 12 years. For about the past 10 years I have been keeping assorted cichlids. As great as they are I need a change. That’s what I am looking to get some advice on.

I have a 135 gallon tank and I really like the idea of having a lot of fish rather than a handful so I want to switch to a community type tank. I have been doing some reading on some of the best 'schooling' fish and it looks like everyone says rummynose tetras, cardinal tetras, and dwarf rasboras. Like I said, I have 135 gallons to stock so I am looking for some more opinions. Also how many of each type do you think I would need to get a good school? Any recommendations for a cleaning crew?

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[Wills]

Hi welcome to the forum! Wow 135 gallons nice sized tank what are the dimensions? Tons of options if you want schooling fish, though if it were me I usually like to have one or two feature fish as well. The popular larger schooling fish are things like rainbow fish like red, bosmani, turquoise, parkinson and more or you could always do big groups of the smaller ones like blue eye, fork tail, dwarf neon or threadfin. Then back to big schoolers, denison barbs and auralis barbs both get to about 6/8 inches and look ace in a big tank. Then you have the larger tetras like columbian and buenos aires.

But obviously you could do any of the smaller schooling fish in massive schools. I think if it were me I would do a school of a headstander species with some pencil fish - like some coral red pencilfish and spotted headstanders. I would probably look at getting a colony of earth eaters in there as well. They are a kind of cichlid but prefer to be in groups rather than singles or pairs, your tank could hold pretty much any of them but I think I would be tempted by Geophagus Tapajo sp Red Head Or an other grouping cichlid are the uarus there are two types the regular uaru and the panda urau but the pandas are very expensive.

As for clean up crew, tons of options again. You have all the cory species + the hoplos and flagtail catfish. Pim pictus would be good in a nice group would look good with the spotted headstanders I mentioned as well actually. Then you have the plecs a lot of the bigger L numbers would be pretty happy in there L190 Royal Panaques are awesome but if your going for more medium/small fish big ones like L14 sunny plecs etc might look out of place. Or you could go for smaller ones like L66 king tiger plecs.

The choices are fantastic its just down to getting a balanced looking tank

Hope thats helped with ideas

 

[Critter7204]

Thanks for the info Wills!

The tank is 72½ x 18½ x25.

The coral red pencil fish are outstanding! I love them but from what I have read that are sort of rare and trust me, the price backs that up

I also really like the Bosmani Rainbows and will look at picking some up.