Ideas & advice for fish stocking

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daizeUK

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Tank size: 120L, 2 ft square
Water: Very hard, alkaline
Plants: heavily planted jungle style in soil substrate
Cycled: 2 year old established tank
Current inhabitants: 9 cherry barbs, 2-3 ancient Amano shrimp and a lot of pond snails.

I would like to try a group of 6 tiger barbs in this tank but I'm concerned the 2ft width would be too small for them. The tank is 120L but deep rather than wide.

I've previously kept platies, guppies, celestial pearl danios and threadfin rainbowfish in this tank with success and I'm happy to stock any of those again if tiger barbs aren't an option. Actually, maybe not the rainbows as my cherry barbs might not be able to resist nipping them.

Ideas & advice appreciated.
 
Check this website: http://www.wetwebmedia.com/fwsubwebindex/fwhardness.htm

Once you have selected the fish you would like, research each one individually and check that their water parameters and stocking is suitable for your tank.

Tiger barbs are aggressive and are known fin nippers. You can keep them in ph 6-7.5 and gh 2-30.

Deep tanks are not as good as wide tanks since most fish swim horizontally rather than vertically, although the extra water means more stability in water parameters so it isnt exactly wasted. Without knowing exact dimensions i cannot say for sure if it ok to stock them.

Tiger barbs need to be kept in a shoal of 5 or more.

Use this website to check recommended stocking level for 5 or more in your tank if water parameters are ok: http://aqadvisor.com
 
Sorry, I would recommend against the tiger barbs. 6 is a rather small group and tank size is imho too small too. So there is no warranty that it will work.

Is your tank size stated correctly? A 2 ft square should hold much more water than 120l?
 
Meh it's 2ft wide and not quite square, but deep enough to make 120L. It's a Juwel Lido.

Thanks for the advice, I love the look of tiger barbs but I will try to find an alternative. Perhaps I can find a platy with black and white patterns for a similar look. Or perhaps a dalmation molly, I've never kept mollies before, would that work in this tank?
 
A Juwel Lido 120 is 61 cm wide x 41 cm front to back x 58 cm tall to the top of the lid. (24 x 16 x 23 inches). Obviously the water surface will be less than 58 cm/23 inches above the base, probably around 48 cm/19 inches for a volume of 120 litres/32 gallons.

I don't think that mollies (or swordtails) would work in this tank. It may be 120 litres but it is the same length as most 60 litre tanks, and mollies (and swordtails) are big fish which need a longer tank.
 
Thanks essjay. Thought as much, although some sites tell me mollies are fine in a small (10 gallon) tank. But I'd forgotten they also like a bit of salt, so perhaps not the best fish for a planted tank.

So this is a list of fish I've kept before in this tank and I know they work well:
  • Platies
  • Threadfin rainbowfish
  • Celestial Pearl Danios
  • Guppies
  • Endlers
  • Cherry Barbs
Is there literally any other fish I could consider stocking or have I exhausted my options?
 
Actually, mollies don't need salt, they just need very hard water.

The only site I would trust is Seriously Fish though the site seems to have had problems for the last couple of days as all the profiles are blank :/

I'm not that well up in hard water fish, having soft water myself, but another fish that springs to mind is emerald rasboras http://www.seriouslyfish.com/species/celestichthys-erythromicron/ (when the site gets sorted out) but not with celestial pearl danios as they can interbreed.


It would also be a help if you could tell us just how hard your water is. If you don't have a tester, look at your water company's website - we need the unit as well as the number as water companies could use any of half a dozen units.
 
Ah yes, Seriously Fish is the website I used to rely on. It's been a few years since I last looked anything up so I'm a little rusty. Shame it's unusable right now.

Thanks for the tip about emerald rasbora. That's also reminded me I used to keep a spreadsheet of potentially suitable fish with tank size and pH requirements, totally forgot about it until now. Aha, I'd already eliminated tiger barbs from the list because they need a minimum 80cm tank!

Also I remember now I once kept some blue-eyes along with the threadfins, totally forgot about them. Forktail blue-eyes could be another option.

Neon dwarf rainbowfish are on my list but I don't have any hardness data for them, any idea if they would like my tank?

My water is 300 mg/L CaCo3 hard.
 
I would consider the neon dwarf rainbow also too active for that tank size. If I remeber correctly, they also don't like too alkaline water.
 
Melanotaenia praecox is one of the rainbowfish that like soft water. They are fine for water of my hardness ( 5 dH). Unfortunately I can't check with Seriously Fish at the moment and FishBase doesn't give that information for this species.


I just hope SF gets sorted out soon :sad:
 
Ah that's a pity, thanks for your advice guys.

X-ray tetras look interesting and seem to be hard water tolerant, they might possibly be a good fit for my tank?

Failing that, I think I'll try to get either CPDs or emerald rasbora depending on what my LFS has stocked, and maybe 1-3 patterned platies for a centrepiece. According to the AqAdvisor tool, that puts me at 68-81% stocked depending on how many fish I get.

I wonder if a single male molly would be OK in a tank this size, since male livebearers tend to be smaller than females.
 

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