Help Me Find A Feature Fish?

[saz326]

I have had a 60 litre aquarium for about 5 years, and am now upsizing to 200 litres (nice!)

I am going to keep my current fish as I love the variety of behavious a community aquarium allows.

Current Shoals will be increased in size, (have tetras mainly) but I would also like a feature fish. Id like a fish I can give a name to (only named fish I have at the moment, are Dora {cory dora}, Big Fat ugly Bas*ard fish {bristle nosed catfish} and Mr and Mrs shrimp. )

Can anyone think of a feature fish apart from a well behaved kribensis that is suitable for this tank? Planted tank, 3mm substrate, few branches/logs.

Thanks.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

can you please give us the full list of the fish that you currently have (and intend to move to the new tank) along with anything else you have your eye on for the main tank.

then we can work out what would fit around that

 

[tenohfive]

As Miss W says, post up a list. If its community fish you've got, one of the bigger gourami's spring to mind.

 

[saz326]

Okay - that sounds like a plan.

Fish I have are:
4 black skirt tetra
5 Silver tip tetra
1 Cory Dora (not sure which type)
1 Bristlenose catfish
Pair Red robin Gourami (Dwarf variety)

Plus 3 Amano Shrimp.


I would like to keep the shrimp in my new tank - but wouldnt be too shocked if they were eaten. They'd get the chance to hide and run from any new fish.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

good thing you're upgrading tank size, that's a pretty heavy stocking on a 60l tank, we usually recommend around 1" of fish per us gallon of water, when the tank is mature you can go up to around 1.5" per gallon. At the moment you have over 2" per gallon on the 60 litre tank.

ok well firstly you shopuld get the cory some friends, they need to be kept in a group of 6+ so at least 5 more of them should be on your shopping list.

likewise bump up the numbers of the black skirt tetras and the silver tip tetras so you have at leats 6 of each.

for each of these species the bigger the group the happeier they are so you may want to consider going up to 8-10 of each, up to you though.


so that would give you

6 black skirt tetra - 12"
6 Silver tip tetra - 12"
6 Cory Dora (not sure which type) - 12" (depending on species, assumed average sized species)
1 Bristlenose catfish - 6"
Pair Red robin Gourami (Dwarf variety) - 6"
Plus 3 Amano Shrimp. - 3"

that's 51" of fish, so that would put you up to 1" per gallon in the new tank, what I would suggest you do is move the fish to the new tank and increase the numbers as above then don't add any new ones for 3/4 months, once the new tank has had time to stabilise you can add a few more fish to take you up to around 1.5" per gallon.

After a couple of months you should be looking to add around 25" more fish to the tank (not all at once though!)

How about a pair of kribensis or rams as a 'feature fish' for the tank and then something like I'd go for a large shoal of a small tetra like rummy noses which would complement the larger tetra's that you have now?