Suggestions For Fish To Add To My Lonely Platy

[kazbang]

Hello
Me and my husband and 4 year old son are new to fish keeping.
We bought 2 male platies a couple of months ago and had them in a small 14 litre cold water tank.  One of them was ill soon after we bought them with what looked like a bacterial infection and although we treated the water as soon as we realised, he sadly died.  I think he was ill when we bought him and moving pushed him over the edge.
 
His friend is still with us and is well and we recently bought him a bigger tank (60 litres) and a heater and we have transferred him to this new tank and he looks very happy in there swimming about. We transferred his filter over with him as well as getting him a new better filter to hopefully keep the good bacteria and we transferred his gravel and rocks and his water over with him.  We don't have any live plants only plastic ones.
We will wait a couple more weeks and test the water to make sure it is suitable to add some more fish.
He looks a bit lonely and I wonder what would be good friends for him? 
 
Can anyone please suggest some tank mates for my poor lonely platy (I don't want to breed them). Should we get another couple of male platies and what other fish would you suggest?

We would like some nice colourful fish that are reasonably hardy and will not tend to fight each other.
 
I also fancy having some snails.
 
I know you need to wait a couple of weeks between adding different fish so which are most hardy and should therefore be added first and which to be added last?
 
Also suggestions on how many fish would be the maximum in our 60 litre tank would be most welcome.
 
Thanks in advance for any help and advice
Karen
 
 

 

[the_lock_man]

In a 60l, then you'd have room for a 2/3 more male platies, and then a shoal of 6 of a small shoaling species, my particular favourites are Celestial Pearl Danios and Chilli Rasboras.

 

[kazbang]

Great thank you, have had a look online and both those shoaling species look very nice

 

[daizeUK]

Platies are quite hardy so I would add those before introducing anything else.
 
To work out how many fish you can have, many people use the inch per gallon or cm per litre rule as a starting guide.  This means you could have 60cm or 16 inches depending on which rule you use (the metric one is more generous!)
 
Adult male platies grow to 5cm so three of those would be 15cm or 6 inches.
 
Chilli Rasbora and Celestial Pearl Danios would both prefer to be in a heavily planted tank.
 
Do you have hard or soft water?  Low or high pH?

 

[kazbang]

Thanks for your info.
I was not planning on having any real plants but can rethink this if plants are really necessary. 
 
My tap water is very hard.
 
The PH level is 7.2
 
Thanks
Karen

 

[daizeUK]

That surprises me, 7.2 is quite a low pH for 'very hard' water.
For example, my water board website tells me that my water hardness is 304mg/l CaCO₃which is classified as 'hard' and my tank pH is 8.2.
 
Anyway, I was asking because certain fish do better in hard water (e.g. guppies, endlers) and others do better in soft water (e.g. the chilli rasboras, neon tetras).  If you're somewhere in the middle then it won't matter so much.
 
Some suggestions (these would all be under 16 inches):
4 male platies + 5 guppies
4 male platies + 8 endlers
3 male platies + 4 honey gourami
3 male platies + 8 espei rasbora

 

[kazbang]

Thanks for this. 
Well I say very hard water but when I check the Yorkshire water website it says moderately hard.  I am going by the fact that everything that gets in contact with our water is covered in limescale and I have to use de-limescale in the toilet and on the taps because it builds up so quickly.
But the pH is definitely measuring as 7.2 so not sure why the discrepancy.
I will wait a couple of weeks and add the platies and then a couple more weeks and add something else from the lists, depending what they have at my local aquarium shop!
How about little shrimps and snails, do you think a few of these would be okay with the fish listed?
Thanks
Karen

 

[daizeUK]

We've just broken the lid on yet another kettle because the mechanism keeps scaling up... only had this one a few months!
 
I don't think I would trust platies with small shrimp such as RCS.  I have a tank full of platies and I want to add some shrimp with them too.  I am going to try some amano shrimp which are bigger but less colourful and see how they get on.  My tank has plenty of moss and hiding places so I'm hoping they will do okay!

 

[kazbang]

Let me know how the shrimp do!   Thanks for all your help.