Ideas To Complete My Community

[Kwiddows]

Hi, I have nearly finished stocking my tank and just wondered what might be a few good fish to complete the community. So far I have:

• 6 zebra danios
• 5 guppys
• 4 black phantom tetra (2 pairs)
• 6 julii corys
• 1 yoyo loach
• 8 neon tetras

The tank has some live plants in which I am hoping will grow a lot more to give some quite densly planted areas and some surface cover. I have 2 internal filters running (eheim biopower 240 and fluval 2 plus)and change 20 litres of water a week. Water quality is good but slightly hard.

I'm looking to add just a couple more fish, with strong colours, and maybe a bit bigger, so they stand out. I have been looking at dwarf gouramis, angelfish, sunset platies, swordtails or lyretail killifish.

Does anyone have any recommendations on any of these, suggestions for fish I haven't thought of, or advice on whether I should avoid any of these ones?

Many thanks.

 

[moochy13]

angel fish and neons probably wont get on. i recently put 10 neons in my tank, which contains a growth stunted angel about half adult size. within 4 days i was down to 2 neons. i found only 2 bodies of fish that looked like they died beause they were weak, i suspect the rest got eaten, either by my angel or a big syno catfish. neons are angel food in the wild. a properly grown angel will hoover them up.

i thought i might get away with it because my angel isnt full size, but it looks like i was wrong.

 

[eaglesaquarium]

First, up your phantom tetra numbers to at least 6.

Next:
Dwarf gouramis are a nice choice - honey gourami seem to be the hardiest.
Angels, as mentioned above, are a poor choice with neons. Neons are a part of their natural diet.
Swordtails are a good choice, but I would stick to either 1m and 2-3f, or 5m.

 

[Kwiddows]

Thanks very much both for the comments. I will certainly avoid the angelfish!

Eaglesaquarium, thanks for this, I do like dwarf gouramis. I think I might wait and keep going back to the LFS to see what they have and pick up some fish when particular individuals catch my eye, they might have some impressive swordtails come in that I cant resist. The place near me though never seems to have dwarf gouramis - might have to travel further for those.

The phantoms are tricky, advice seems divided on keeping them in larger groups (like 8 or 10) or in male/female pairs, when I bought them they advised 2 pairs and they do seem to be doing fine. I'll do some more reading.

As for colourful additions to the community, I'm now also looking at peacock gobies, which might take quite a while to find. Would they suit this kind of tank?