Semi Aggressive Stocking HELP

[Weston.Bratland]

Hello I have a 37 gallon freshwater tank ready to stock. My water is slightly soft and the tank dimensions are 30"L x 22-1/2"H x 12"W. My tank would be semi aggressive and I know I want...
-7 Tiger barbs
-3 of some kind of loach
I would like a main attraction, very colorful and bigger. And I would also like kind of a "second main attraction". that is also colorful. Any ideas please?

 

[hobby5]

I would say tank too small for tiger barbs. They do better the larger the group. With only 7 your are on the lower end. Loaches are highly social fish. 3 are not enough. Be aware that most loaches get pretty big and are too big for your tank too.

 

[Byron]

This is the minimum tank size (80cm by 30cm) suggested on SF, provided only the group of Tiger Barbs are included, and in numbers around 8-10 minimum. No other upper fish. But "minimumj" is not the best, as hobby5 notes.

Substrate fish would be possible, and some of the loaches would be suited, but this tank has insufficient space for these. I have maintained two of the dwarf species in a 3-foot (90cm) tank, but even that seemed small as the loaches grew, and after a couple years I moved them into the 90g 4-foot where they seem much happier. They are out and about far more now than they were in the smaller tank. But this was the dwarf species, and I would not combined them with Tiger Barbs. The larger species need more room. Loaches are very highly social fish, and five or six is the minimum of a species.

Byron.