Tank Mates

[Osian]

I've been looking at what I could place in my 13 uk gallon tank and using the ThinkFish.com comunity creator and come up with these fish. I havent finished reading up on them yet, and the tank is still going though it's fishless cycle.

1 Siamese fighting fish (which I already have in a 3 gallon tank.)
4 Salt and Papper Catfish
10 Galaxy Rasbora
5 Otocinclus
6 Glowlight Danio

I wasnt sure if i'd missed any problems there might be. THe Siamese fighter would be the last to go into the tank and i'd keep a close eye on him, and if he didnt settle down he's go back to his 3 gallon. I would like to move him, as if he stays in his tank now he'll have to move to a back room. So though i'd post here to see if i've missed somthing or perhaps i've overstocked.

Any comments would be very appriciated, thanks.

 

[waterdrop]

I'm a basically a beginner like you, so will be interested to see what people say about that stocking amount.

Here's my thought process (If the experienced aquarists would critique this it might help both of us!): When I look at your list I first think that at least most/all the fish are small. When you see those in the LFS they are usually an inch of body each or perhaps less than an inch in many cases. So let's say an inch and that would put us at 26 inches of fish body, right? Then we look at the tank size, which, since I happen to be in the USA, I think of as 15 gallons. Following the old very rough inch per gallon rule, we are overstocked by 11 fish right from the start.

But even this is probably not right because a slightly better rough rule I thought was to take each type of fish a look up the average maximum size it can grow to. Many fish that appear in the LFS at 1 inch body (fins don't count) size turn out to have a max growth of 2 inches, 3 inches or more. So you could look them up and see whether to add more inches because of that. It looks like the beautiful galaxy rasboras only grow to an inch. Otos don't grow to more than 2 inches, so.. so far you are not too far off from being 11 inches or so overstocked perhaps.

Getting beyond those 2 rough rules above, there is the even better thing of studying the individual fish in more detail. Some have more mass or activity than others. There are all sorts of considerations that can "change the general rule."

FWIW, those are my thoughts,
~~waterdrop~~

 

[aquila]

1 Siamese fighting fish (which I already have in a 3 gallon tank.)
4 Salt and Papper Catfish
10 Galaxy Rasbora
5 Otocinclus
6 Glowlight Danio

Personally I would omit the danios as they are fast swimming and very active fish. By salt and pepper catfish do you mean a variety of corydoras? If one of the pygmy/dwarf varieties then that should work just fine. I might also consider swapping the otos for some variety of shrimp, giving you:

1 siamese fighting fish (if he proved he could behave himself and not nip)
4-5 pygmy corydoras
10 galaxy rasbora (celestial pearl danios now, aren't they?)
5 amano or cherry shrimp

Which sounds like a lovely varied stocking list for a small tank.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

You'll find most experienced aquarists don't like those community creator things, i've not yet found one with reliable compatibility info which offers sensible stocking levels.

There is however a very easy and sensible guideline which will help you work out how many fish you can have, it's 1" of fish per US Gallon of water in the tank. Now obviously it's not infallible, there's loads of exceptions and other factors. But it's a good starting point.

You'll find the more fish you put in a tank the harder it is to keep the tank healthy, and there coems a point at which it is impossible, stocking to 1" per gallon will keep the tank at a point where it is easy to maintain for a beginner, and you'll have room for a couple more fish down the line when you get a bit more experience under your belt.

So for you're 13 gal tank, you want 13" of fish, here is what the community creator has given you

1 Siamese fighting fish (which I already have in a 3 gallon tank.) - 3"
4 Salt and Papper Catfish - 8"
10 Galaxy Rasbora - 10"
5 Otocinclus - 10"
6 Glowlight Danio - 6"

so 37" of fish, that is massivley overstocked, I've been keeping fish for 5 years now and I consider myself fairly experienced, that is waaaay beyond what i would put in any one of my tanks, I'll stock up to 2" per gallon maximum.

There's also a couple of issues, danio's are really quick swimming fish and while they stay small, need a lot of swimming room, so you want a 30gal tank for them or somewhere near that.

The catfish chosen are one of the larger species of cories, there are smaller species which would be much better suited to that tank

The galaxy rasbora have been massivley overfished in the wild and are now banned as wild imports, they do occasionally turn up as tank breds but they're expensive and you may have considerable trouble tracking them down, so this may not be a brilliant idea as a newcomer!!

The siamese fighter will be considerably happier if you leave him in his 3 gallon by himself. he's likely to attack the danio's and rasbora's.

 

[Osian]

I thought i was overstocked as it seemed to be quite a lot of fish, but the creator said i had 58cm out of 75 total using the type of filtration i had. This is why i thought i'd run it though here, even though i'm weeks from being anywhere near ready to buy fish i wanted to make sure it would be ok. I had no idea about the galaxy being rare, hadnt read that much on them, i only changed them from slender harlequin as they where smaller, and more colourfull. The catfish i chose is ment only to grow to 3cm (about an 1") and i was under the impression it was one of the smallest (Corydoras habrosus latin name).
keep on reading and
At the moment i'm busy reading about all the fish, and there are quite a bit, to try and find out what would look good and work together. I'll keep on reading and please any other comments is very much appriciated.

 

[Osian]

Been looking around and i was now thinking of say 4 very small pygmy cories perhaps somthing like 10 small rasbora or tetras. The tank is 16 US gallons and has a Hagen Stingray filter rated for 20 US gallons(75liters). Would it be alright to also place 2 air driven sponge filter in the tank, as it would also mean if i needed to seperate a fish or start a new tank i'd have a spare sponge filter? or would that much overfiltration be bad?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

well peppered cories can definatley get over 1", see them regularly in the lfs's at 2/3", with all these things if you look at a variety of sites you'll get a variety of answers on the sizes and temprements of the fish, this is because fish don't read fish books, so they don't always know how they're meant to behave or what size to grow to, and as such it's not uniform across the species, whoever makes the website gives their own experience. Any one person is not going to have owned every species even over several years so they are bound to draw on experience of what they have seen in fish shops and such like, because most of the fish in shops are juvi's the sizings often are not full adult size. This is why I like the fish profiles on this website, because the forum has something like 25,000 members between us we have owned a hell of a lot of species of fish, so generally the species profiles are created only by people who have practical experience with this fish.

You will also find a lot of these creators are linked to websites where you can buy the stock from, of course they will tell you you can have more fish, cos it means you'll buy more from them.

regarding filters, manufacturers tank size recommendations are always... shall we say... optomistic. so if you have a 16 gal tank, the minimum filtration you want is for a 20gal, preferably more like 25/30 (unless of course you plan on choosing species which require still water, which it doesn't seem like). So I think it's safe to add another small filter.

there's a topic pinned at the top of the new to the hobby forum which gives stocking suggestions for small tanks which may gives you some inspiration

 

[waterdrop]

"regarding filters, manufacturers tank size recommendations are always... shall we say... optomistic. so if you have a 16 gal tank, the minimum filtration you want is for a 20gal, preferably more like 25/30 (unless of course you plan on choosing species which require still water, which it doesn't seem like). So I think it's safe to add another small filter. "

What goes through the experienced aquarist's head when thinking about an upper limit to filtration? The main thing I can think of would be not having the filters create too much water flow disturbance for the fish/plants. I may be reading too much into your last sentence there, MW, but you are ten times more experienced than me and that sentence made me curious whether you were thinking that too many more filters just gets impractical or whether there were other problems with over-filtration?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

yeah you're basically right, unless you've got too much flow rate for a particular situation then you can basically add as much filtration as you like

you should be mindful of the natural habitat of your fish, if you're fish come from a stream then the fish will like a fast flowing highly oxygenated water therefore adding more filters is a good thing. if the fish come from muddy ponds they can be calmed by the water not being completely clear (people will sometimes add in tanines and such like, seen people use decomposing leaves as a substrate to mimic the natural environment before) and fairly slow flowing. If you put something like a betta in a tank with v strong flow they will significantly struggle to swim and will wear themselves out with the effort literally to the point of death.

in planted tanks where you are adding extra Co2 to the water the extra filtration (and oxygenation that goes with it) will be counter productive as it will drive Co2 out of the water

sure there are other examples where lots of filtration is a bad thing but that gives you the general gist!
basically in most situations i advise to use as much filtration as you can afford!

 

[dwarfgourami]

"well peppered cories can definatley get over 1", see them regularly in the lfs's at 2/3",

The OP is not talking about paleatus, Miss Wiggle, but about habrosus which are a good deal smaller- and saltandpepper corydoras is indeed their common name


I would leave out the glowlights, but would up the number of habrosus to 6 or more. And I'd probably leave the fighter where he is, too. This will give you a tank with very small fish which will make the tank itself seem larger. Tbh I think the galaxies need a more peaceful environment than having a bunch of danios whizzing round their ears.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

"well peppered cories can definatley get over 1", see them regularly in the lfs's at 2/3",

The OP is not talking about paleatus, Miss Wiggle, but about habrosus which are a good deal smaller- and saltandpepper corydoras is indeed their common name

ah ok, my bad. i thought they meant peppered aka paleatus. i hate common names

 

[Osian]

Sorry I'll try and add the latin name as well, will be good practice for me anyway so i get to know them.

So just to make sure I could either get 6 Corydoras habrosus or a somthing like 8 small tetras or rasbora (somthing like spoted roasbora?)
or could i have both?

Thank you for all the help.

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Sorry I'll try and add the latin name as well, will be good practice for me anyway so i get to know them.

So just to make sure I could either get 6 Corydoras habrosus or a somthing like 8 small tetras or rasbora (somthing like spoted roasbora?)
or could i have both?

Thank you for all the help.

you could have 6 habrosus and a small shoal of tetra's/rasbora's in you're tank.


the habrosus are a touch delicate so put the tetra's in first and leave it a good few months (6 preferably) then add the cories

 

[Osian]

Cool thank you, I'd imagin it will take a while to track down somthere that sells the Hasbrosus as i've yet to see anywhere, but once my tank has cycled i'll get some more plants and find a shoal of small tetras/rasbora's depending on what the lfs has. and thank again for your help.

 

[Osian]

Sorry tp bring this topic back up but i though it was better than starting a new one. I havent been able to find any hasbrosus so i was thinking would 5 otos be alright with ember tetras. My lfs have both of these in stock and as the ember tetras are very small i though i would make up for the fact the otos are a little larger than the hasbrosus. Also how are tetras and guppys, if you dont mind me asking?

and thank you again, cant imagin the mess i'd have made if my only form of information were lfs and old books.