New Fish Advise

[Scales9]

We have just upgraded our tank it is a 55g, we have 3 Dalamtion Molly's, 1 baloon belly Molly, 3 black skirts, some tini neons, and a bristle nose pleco. We wanted some bigger fish as the ones we have (apart from the pleco) are quite small. The tank is 4" long, anyone have any ideas on what would go well with what we already have.

 

[OldMan47]

I have found, at least for me, that a nice shoal of 15 or 20 neons is stunning in a large tank where they can swim around together. A common mistake that is often made is to clutter a tank with too many varieties of fish. The end result is often not very appealing. Since I specialize in wild type fish, I often devote a tank to each species so that they can breed true, but that is seldom an option for a person starting out. Some other nice small fish that would work well with your present stock includes rasbora hets Glow light tetras, zebra danios and giant danios. A larger fish that often works out in a community is rainbow cichlids, Herotilapia multispinosa. These are a few of mine that I kept in a community tank for over 4 years. Note that they grow to about 4 inches on average.

NB. If the rainbows breed, you will find all of your other fish at one end of the tank. Breeding rainbow cichlids are quite protective of their fry. This is one of mine in breeding colors with its fry. The black lower body color is a warning to other fish to stay away.