Help on community tanks

[Kelley24]

Hiya, i have had a tropical fish tank for a while but was given another tank for free. I would love any advice that anyone could give me about what to put in it. The current tank that i have has Neon, Glowlight tetras, adult guppies and numerous baby guppies, penguin tetras, silver tipped tetras and a red tailed shark. All these fish live well together and i have had no problems keeping them. But i would like to have different fish other than tetras. I would LOVE angel fish, but i was told that i had to have a tank with only 2 of them in and nothing else! i dont know how true that is.

So any help on what to have in my second tank would be appreciated.

Thank You
Kelley

 

[WILDER]

Need to no how many gallons the tank is.

 

[Kelley24]

It is 54 litres/ 12 gallons

 

[WILDER]

Not alot of choice apart from what you have, angel need a 30gal tank, the red tailed shark need a 40gal tank.

 

[Kelley24]

i know about the shark, have arranged with step-dad to have the shark if it out grows my tank as he has a 200 gallon tank. the question i wanted answering is what kind of fish i can have, i want to get away from only having tetras.

Kelley

 

[WILDER]

I no the feeling, gouramis.

 

[Kelley24]

Anyone else with other ideas? itching to get tank set up and to know what sorta fish to get.
Also does anyone know of any web sites that let u type in a kind of fish and then it gives u a list of fish suitable, ie type in Neon Tetra and other fish are given in a list that will go well with neons in a community tank?

Kelley

 

[SnowyzMom]

You could get a tank dedicated to 3 or 4 white skirt tetras (the fish some stores dye bright pink and bright blue! ), black skirt tetras are equally gorgeous and very stately fish compared to the more torpedo like neons and glowlights. Hard to believe they're all tetras. The black skirts are about the closest to angel fish in looks and don't need all that space. They look great in a school of 4 or 5 or more.

Or if you're like me and bananas over those tiny african clawed frogs you could get a couple of those. You could buy tiger barbs, but they work best alone, in a school of 5-8. I love green tiger barbs. When I get another tank I want to make it just for them. But they're not a community fish. Corydoras(a mini catfish) are always fun to have around. I've got pepper corydoras, they're black spots on a brown body but mine have a lovely green sheen on their sides now, added bonus. There are all colours and types of cories and one can get VERY addicted to them. They can, in groups of 3 or 4, chug around the bottom areas of your tank and vacuum up what everyone else didn't eat. You could get 3 ottoc(h)inclus (never can spell that right). They're a tiny little sucker fish from south america that cling onto the aquarium glass and they also keep it algae free. They're nice fish too.

Well that's a few to start off with. Hope it helped some.

 

[Kelley24]

That is a great help, my dad used to have a tank dedicated to different kinds of sharks and i was going to rescue them when he died in July, but my step-mum sold them all before my dad went into hospital! So i was thinking of havin my second tank for sharks, dedicated to dad, but my tank in tiny compared to my dads old one.

The green tiger barbs sounds interesting. Will have a look and see what they look like.

Kelley

 

[SnowyzMom]

I don't think in your size of tank you could have more than say 6 of the green tigers, maybe 8 but that's pushing the tank limits. They're lovely fish but only one or two in a community tank and they terrorize every other fish in it, nipping and chasing them. In a group they just pick on each other, showing off etc.

Sharks....yep, a bigger tank is generally needed, a wayyy bigger tank, though there are some sharks that stay fairly tiny. Check in the library on fish sizes on that one. Somebody here could probably suggest smaller sharks, but not for a 12 gallon I don't think. Or I've never heard of any, put it that way. I do love sharks but I've only got guppies and corydoras in my 10 gallon...or I did until I helped my niece out by taking some sailfin mollie fry from her. Sigh....new tank coming up in the near future....once the mollies grow some. Or at least it makes a good excuse!

The one inch of fish per 1 gallon of water rule is still the best though if you have some fish that are bottom feeders,like corydoras or loaches, some middle layer fish, like neons, and some surface-like guppies(tho mine go all over the place) in theory one can supercede the 1 inch per 1 gallon rule...but go carefully on that. It's so easy to overstock and get into all sorts of problems with water quality and diseases due to stress.

 

[Kelley24]

its mainly my b/f thats moaning. lol. all he says is that he'll buy the stuff to set the tank up, but only if we get colourful fish, which is why i started with the neons and glowlights etc. but i want the second tank to be MY tank. lol. I've seen the frogs in my local shop, and am a bit put off cos i dont know anything about them. Also seen some purple emperors. they are lovely, but again i know nothing about them and cant seem to fond anything about em in my fish books.

Black skirts sound very interesting and have always wanted a catfish because my grandad had one that was a nutter! it swam in ways i didnt know fish could. lol

Kelley

 

[illusion54]

Youre probably best off sticking with what you have...neons or guppies. 12 gallons is too small for a nice community tank of variety.

 

[dwarfgourami]

How about platies? Not very exotic perhaps, but should be quite colourful enough to please your boyfriend. And you can get each one a different colour if you like, they come in all sort of varieties. You need to hink about the sex ratio of course, but they are nice little fish.

Or you should be able to fit in a trio of honey gouramis (correct me, anyone).

Or one dwarf gourami and some otos? (preferably using your old tank and transferring the others to the new, as both kinds prefer a mature tank).

Or platys and otos?

Three corys and three platys? (slightly overstocked by the 1 gallon rule, but not all corys grow to 3 inches)

I'm sure there are lots of possible variations. 12 gallons, while not big, is not absolutely tinsy.

Youre probably best off sticking with what you have...neons or guppies. 12 gallons is too small for a nice community tank of variety.

[snapback]901068[/snapback]​

 

[Kelley24]

Youre probably best off sticking with what you have...neons or guppies. 12 gallons is too small for a nice community tank of variety.

[snapback]901068[/snapback]​

My mature tank is a nice community tank! all fish are nice. Perhaps nice is not the correct term to use illusion54, we all have to start our tropical fish hobby somewhere and mine is with 2 reasonable sized tanks.

I have printed off the reply you put dwarfgourami because there is a lot of useful information on there, not thought about the kinds of fish that you suggested. Guess where i'm going this weekend! lol. I'm going to get the filter etc and fill my tank, then leave for a week or so and then do the fish hunting. lol

I must admit that i went to fish shop today and got my water tested and bought a cat fish and purple emperors for my mature tank. They look brilliant in there. and my local shop is excellent for advice and how many fish i can have etc, but bit pricey and a bit vague on what fish suit each other in a community tank.

Thanx for all the advice everyone.
Kelley x

 

[Siamese Fighter05]

Hey Kelley24

If your tank is a juwell rekord 60, which the measurements sound the same as, you may be happy to hear its actually just under 15gal (14.8) if its not the juwell ignore this.

You are right you can diffently get a beautiful 12 - 15g community, If anyone doesnt believe this go and take a look at jimboo's tank, I always go now and again just to admire because im hoping that i can make my rekord look that good some day ( Xmas money ).

With this size tank you could go with a shoal of 4-5 cories ( preferably the smaller varietys such as leopard or bandit but you could go with the slight larger ones if your heart is set on them) A pair of rams and then a small shoal of tetras, i know you wanted to move away from them but after the rams and cories thats not much else you could go with. Then again you could just move a small shoal from your other tank into here and then choose another fish for your mature tank. If you go by the '' per gallon rule this is overstocked but as long as you over filter and keep excellent water parametres and maybe add some plants this would be fine. Remember to go with a fishless cycle and read up everything you can about it and all the fish ive suggested if your interested. Im currently fishless cycling my rekord now which im going to go along the same stocking suggestion that ive just given you as well as trying to plant it like jimboo's
HTH
Dan