Looking To Restock 30 Gallon Tank.

[donny7]

I've recently migrated the majority of the fish in my 30 gallon into my 20 gallon, due to a heater breaking. I'd consider moving them back but they're appreciating the 20 gallon tank far more. Regardless, my current 30 gallon has

x2 dalmation mollies
x2 female swordtails
x1 dojo loach


I'm trying to stay away from fish such as tetras, as I have not had good experience with tetras. Any suggestions? I'm also going to be buying some plants and I was wondering, should I buy any supplements? I'm going to petsmart FYI, only LFS store in town, so I'm limited to their selection.

 

[KittyKat]

I assume you are going coolwater, as you have a weather (dojo) loach in there? In that case, zebra danios or white cloud mountain minnows for schooling fish (both do best at 18-20C or so), and hillstream loaches would also fit, if you have a good flow.

 

[OldMan47]

Try finding out what type of water you have from your tap. Your local water supplier should be able to give you a far better report than anything most of us can measure for ourselves. Many of us have very different water qualities coming out of the tap. Although all of them are safe to drink, the mineral content varies from maybe 30 ppm of TDS in some places to values over 300 ppm such as I experience from my own tap water. If you are having good luck with things like mollies and platies and do not do well with tetras, chances are your water is more like mine than like the low TDS water.
Assuming that you have fairly hard, high TDS water, you will do far better with any of the common livebearers or even the African rift lake fish than with South American fish. These are generalities of course but the general direction of your fish keeping should be to keep fish that will thrive in your tap water. Trying to keep the wrong fish for your water is always a challenge and can lead to failures far too often.