Suggestions For Stocking 5 (ish) Gallon Bow Front

[discdogshayne]

Okay.. so i guess this invovles a bit of a story...


So i had a betta and a blue gourami in a 5.5 gal bow front (the lady at the local fish store said the blue gourami would be okay..i know now they normally dont get a long and that blue gourami's are really too big for that tank). They did get along really well -my betta was 3 at the time and super docile, they were actually quite socia. The blue gourami was really small when i got him and he is almost 2 now and he is still pretty small, no more than 2 inches. Well my betta died (at almost 5 years old!!). So now i have a tank w/ the blue gourami, some plants, and a snail-he seems a little lonely i'm keeping him in this tank for a while then will move him to a 10 gal tank.

When i went to school I got another male betta and put him in a temporary 1 gal tank for a few months(initially with the hopes of giving my gourami a friend in the 10 gal, but this betta is WAY too aggressive to live nicely with the gourami). Seeing they were not going to co-habitate, I got another 5 gal bow front and checked amonia, ph, temp, etc cycled the filter (his other tank also had a filter with a bit of a current). i put him in the bigger tank and he hid in his pirate ship (the same one from his old tank) and wouldn' t come out except for food. he didn't swim around much and after about 2 weeks his color wasn't looking as bright... so i moved him back into the little tank and he is flourishing, bright color, swimming about eating hiding (back to his old, energetic and flaring at everything-self)... so i think he just prefers the small tank.

So here's the dilema... now i have a 5 gal tank just sitting around... any ideas what i could stock it with (since i already have a gourami and a betta, i was thinking maybe some sort of little community fish or some other type of small group fishies). i know it's small but this time around i want to get real advice instead of poor advice from supposed professionals. I would love to hear some suggestions as to what i can put in my tank--i would love a bunch of different ideas.

Thanks guys!

 

[dwarfgourami]

There a couple of options for really titchy fish.

If you can get hold of heterandria formosa- a livebearer- they would fit well into this tank. They are peaceful fish that like a lot of plant cover and are adaptable as to temperature, though tend to prefer hard alkaline water. They are not very brightly coloured (though there is a yellow morph too) but have a nice sheen on them. You could keep them with small shrimps, like cherry shrimps. Ideally, both the heterandrias and the shrimps would like to be in groups. You could easily fit in 5 heterandrias and 5 shrimps in this tank.

If you have very soft water, ember tetras might be the answer. A school of 6-7 ember tetras would look nice. Or microrasboras, like urophtalmoides- another schooling fish. Galaxy rasboras would go well, and are less fussy about soft water, but one hesitates to recommend them in case they are becoming extinct.

Another possibility would be a sparkling gourami, maybe with a group of pygmy corydoras.

Or if you like action, you could set this up as a shrimp tank- there is a lot of fun to be had from shrimps. Or for a few African Dwarf frogs.

Not all the critters I have mentioned here are easily optainable, you may have to ask your shop to order them for you. But then again, these are probably what shops ought to sell more of- given the sort of tanks they sell, and if we ask them for them they may start doing so.

 

[discdogshayne]

There a couple of options for really titchy fish.

If you can get hold of heterandria formosa- a livebearer- they would fit well into this tank. They are peaceful fish that like a lot of plant cover and are adaptable as to temperature, though tend to prefer hard alkaline water. They are not very brightly coloured (though there is a yellow morph too) but have a nice sheen on them. You could keep them with small shrimps, like cherry shrimps. Ideally, both the heterandrias and the shrimps would like to be in groups. You could easily fit in 5 heterandrias and 5 shrimps in this tank.

If you have very soft water, ember tetras might be the answer. A school of 6-7 ember tetras would look nice. Or microrasboras, like urophtalmoides- another schooling fish. Galaxy rasboras would go well, and are less fussy about soft water, but one hesitates to recommend them in case they are becoming extinct.

Another possibility would be a sparkling gourami, maybe with a group of pygmy corydoras.

Or if you like action, you could set this up as a shrimp tank- there is a lot of fun to be had from shrimps. Or for a few African Dwarf frogs.

Not all the critters I have mentioned here are easily optainable, you may have to ask your shop to order them for you. But then again, these are probably what shops ought to sell more of- given the sort of tanks they sell, and if we ask them for them they may start doing so.

Thank you sooo much, you rock! I'm going to look into some of these options! I've never had shrimp, but through my search of stocking this tank i've read a few suggestions for them.... what do shrimp do that makes them so popular? Are they social and interact and are they like funny characters to watch? The whole reason i have gotten into fish is because of my betta and gourami...when they were together they were such characters to watch...it was absolutely hilarious! That was the main reason for looking into a multiple fish tank... was to get some interactions and see some different types of personalities emerge. My gourami and betta's tank was next to our tv...we spent more time w/ the tv off just watching the fish be silly ...it was awesome.

Again thank you soo much... there are a couple pretty good aquarium stores near me so i'll be checking around!