Topic: tropical fish

[tonybloke]

my O.H. has just set up an aquarium, heated, any suggestions for a community of fish? (not livebearers) ;)

[Al37]

Hi Tony,
Sadly don't have mine any more but I used to spend hours watching my clown loaches.
They are mainly bottom dwelling so probably not good with other bottom dwellers such as plecks or other loaches. In my large tank I had six and they got on with each other.
One thing I would say is they can be a bit hard to introduce to a new tank particularly when very young/small.
angel fish are pretty but do tend to nip a lot so if you have any slower swimmers not a good idea.
 Hope that is some help.
Al

[Moonbeam65]

You can have neons, zebra pencil fish,black widows, live bearers like swordfish are really ok  palatumus cat they all seem to get on together but the neons zebra and mountain minnows like to be in shoals there are plenty more that do well in a community tank pet store will probaly keep you right.

[Mark /\]

You could try the following fish.

Neon tetras, Cardinal tetras and Harliquins. These all prefer to live in shoals. At least groups of 5.

Guppys, Swordtails and Platys be carefull though they breed like mad and are some of the few fish to have live babies rather than eggs.

These are all easy fish to keep and look after espescially for beginners.

Good luck they will bring you many hours of enjoyment.

[ACE]

Just get one. An Oscar, teach him to ring a bell for his food. We had one for years, the only trouble is they get quite big if you have a large tank. I had to give mine away because of that, but it would have made a fish supper. OH got a bit annoyed when I suggsted it.

[Sparkly]

If you go for guppies get a ratio of 1 male: 3 or 4 females at least or else the females will  be hounded to death (literally!). I wouldn't recommend mixing tetras and anything with long fins as they are fin nippers. Certainly get a few algae eaters as they help keep your tank tidy.

[glow777]

My advice would be

don't overcrowd
get fish for different layers of the tank ie danios for the surface, clown loaches (as said before) for the bottom. tetras barbs etc for mid layers.

Personaly I think fish tanks are like xmas trees - dont try putting having too many baubles etc (read species ) in the tank try too make it natural with a few species. Barbs and tetras in a big schoal will have a pecking order its only when they get small group numbers that they pick on other fish.

I would get
1 schoal of tiger barbs
1 schoal of tetras (your choice but id go cardinals or neons)
1 schoal of zebra danio
a pair of gouramis (pearl would be my choice)
2 clown loach
1 catfish
1 plecostomous (or however you spell it)

all this would squeeze into a 3' tank easily with some nice plants.

If you frequently change water your fish will grow bigger faster also they will grow faster if you have a strong water current

Avoid putting any snails in your tank by design or with plants fish. They will breed and get everywhere - dont buy fish from tanks with snails

HTH Glow

[tonybloke]

Thanks for advice gang! O.H. is now trawling through a couple of books from the Library, will let you know what she chooses. rgds, Tony ;)

[Patrick King]

If you ever need some guppies tony i have loads of babies at the moment. 20-30 of the little buggers.

i have a ratio of 5 females:2 males and all my females are pregnant again. :-\ gona have to offload some to the shops or freecycle.

[shirlton]

When we kept tropicals we ended up with 5 tanks. We liked the chiclid Family of fish , they are really intelligent. Trouble is uless you have a very big tank the other fish won't be tolerated. (hence the 5 tanks). We had an 18" tank that we bred Kribensis in and to watch them with their babies was amazing.

[Uncle Joshua]

Has your hubby thought about Rainbow fish? Boesemani rainbows are beautiful (as are other rainbows) and they do very well in  community tanks.

http://www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/Fishindx/mel-boes.htm

My tank....

[honeybee]

Some great advice here especially from glow when advising you to balance the layers and yes watch out for the angels.
My favourite are neons, gouramis (great fun) and black mollys but the mollys are livebearers which I know you said you didn't want, lovely fish all the same.