Tank Of Livebearers?

[kniesh]

Hi all, I have decided to turn my 25gla tank into a livebearer tank. So far I have a large piece of wood and I am planning on planting the back half of the tank quite heavily. Fish wise I have 4 metalic platy, 1 orange an black platy and 2 female guppies, unfortunately the male died.

Does anyone have any suggestions on anything else I should be putting in here to make it colourful and attractive? Any suggestions welcome. I was thinking about fantails but not sure they would be ok in this size tank or whether they will eat all the fry. Thx in advance.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Don't put fantail goldfish in with guppys or platys as the fantails will eat them as they grow. Corys make a good addition to any livebearer tank, as well as amano or ghost shrimp, oto's, khuli loaches etc .

 

[kniesh]

Thx, I have actually got 4 cories I was keeping for it and I had what was sold as ghost shrimp at 1" turn out to be 5 long armed shrimp (cause of death to my male guppy). I have since3 moved these an will try an get the proper ones.

Fantail golfish? I thought they were mollies but they do grow to 14cm so i wasnt sure about the size of my tank which is 80cm.

Do you think I should just add guppies and platys then? I was thinking about mollies but wasnt sure about them because they like a bit of salt?

ALSO SWORDTAILS, WOULD THESE BE A GOOD ADDITION?

 

[nmonks]

Mollies do indeed tend to do best with a little salt, and at SG 1.003 (~10% seawater, or 3 grammes of marine salt mix per litre) the platies, guppies, and swordtails will be perfectly happy. Corydoras, on the other hand, aren't wild about salty water. To be honest you won't need them: livebearers are very good at picking up bits of food from the bottom of the tank. (And, of course, you shouldn't be overfeeding them anyway!)

Be careful with mixing varieties of fish if you want to breed them. If you have blue platies and red platies, then the babies are going to be a mish-mash. Perhaps not what you can sell easily to your local aquarium shop. Ideally, keep one variety of each type, so red platies, black mollies, red cobra guppies, and so on.

Cheers,

Neale

 

[kniesh]

Sorry I put fantails there, I actually meant sailfins.