Nataku

You can do multis in a species only 10 gallon, just be aware you will need to stay on top of keeping the numbers in check once they start breeding as they can quickly overcrowd the tank. But really a 20 long is a much better multi tank since they will absolutely make use of every extra bit of ground space you give them.

Hi there! Exodons absolutely will eat butterfly fish. They can become ferocious little hunters in a pack - and they do like to be in a same species group. They can and will take out fish larger than themselves. I've watched them take out full grown angel fish and red tail sharks. I've watched them take out 10" goldfish. So size means little to them. In a group, they get hungry and they will take out large targets. A larger pleco MIGHT be able to make it with them due to their thick scales. Or the exodons may go after the fins and eyes. Hard to say. I never put one in with mine to find out. They lived in a species only tank.

Paradise gourami Ricefish White cloud mountain minnow Variatus platies

A mated pair of discus could go in a 32 flex, but then you couldn't do a community with them. It'd be just the discus, because they'd attack the other fish trying to defend their eggs/young. A non mated pair would typically prefer the company of more discus, which would also necessitate a bigger tank.

In some of the discord groups I am in, there are quite a few folks from south east Asian countries where betta fighting is in fact still common place and considered very normal. It is indeed a cultural difference. The folks I speak to who breed and train fighting fish also tell me that the fish are very rarely ever killed, that the fight is called when a betta shows 'weakness' ie it turns away from the other betta, or it doesn't respond to a flare with a flare or an attack of its own. So many fights are declared and ended as soon as one betta decides nope, its outmatched. I don't agree nor disagree with the 'sport.' I merely accept this is a cultural difference. But having seen pictures and videos of such venues, I can see the concern about spreading covid when you usually have four to thirty people crowded shoulder to shoulder around a table with a bowl on it to watch bettas fight.

Oh yes, fish tank nightmares are common in my list of 'things I have nightmares about.' I have nightmares about heaters exploding, while underwater no less (yes I know that's not how they explode, but nightmare brain is not a logical thing) and then also electrocuting all my fish. I have nightmares about going to feed all my fish and seeing camallanus worms sticking out of all of my fish, in all of my tanks. I know this is paranoia from the time I did have fish come in with camallanus and what a mess treating it was. I also know none of my tanks actually have camallanus. But that one gets me every time and the next morning I'm always scrutinizing my fish as they eat, looking for the little red monsters. I also have a nightmare that my pictus catfish eat my half banded spiny eels, and I walk in to find their tails sticking out of the pictus mouths. This is totally illogical, these fish are housed in different tanks in different rooms of my house. But nightmare brain says they are somehow in the same tank and the pictus eat them like the spaghetti noodles they are. Nightmare brain is kind of a jerk.

Green neon tetra will also do fine at that temperature. Congo tetras will also probably be fine at 84, I've kept them at 82 without issue.

Using culls as feeder fish to another fish or animal is my usual preferred option. This is how it happens in nature, and that their life is being used to sustain another is perfectly acceptable to me. I tend to keep a tank which holds carnivorous fish where I deposit culls as I find them in batches of fry, where they are consumed at the predatory fish's leisure.

Hm, that is odd. I'm posting this from an android device as well, its showing me the option to add pics. Should be one just under this sentence. Can you check and see if your device has a service update it needs to do? I know sometimes my phones starts doing really random things when its pushing for am update.

My tank has several siamese algae eaters and plenty of Malaysian trumpet snails. Also a couple nerites. The substrate is black diamond blasting sand. So it may indeed be a similar concept for what you are planning.

I keep my congos in a 58, which is just a slightly taller 40 breeder. I usually keep the adult school between 10 and 18 individuals. When it was just the congos in that tank, they bred in there and some fry survived, hence the varying numbers. But with the school being large enough and there being other fish in that tank now, none of the eggs survive long enough. When I want to breed them I separate out a pair to a smaller tank to spawn. I'd keep between a dozen and 25 congos in a 75, depending upon how many and what other species you wanted to keep in there with them. Congos will stay in the middle and top of the tank, so bottom dwellers will not interfere with them. But congos are voracious come feeding time, so you will need to feed heavily or get food down to the bottom without the congos gobbling it up first. I've tried them at varying temps over the years from 76 to 82. They do fine at any of those,, so they could be kept with rams. Their tank has amazon swords, jungle valisneria and crypts in it, so yes they do very well with those plants.

The last two shipments I ordered from aquabid (one November, one early December) I got with 'priority' shipping - which USPS at the time said should be 2-3 days. Both shipments spent a full 7 days in the mail before arriving on my doorstep. This is of course no fault of the seller, USPS does what it does and the sellers have no say in that matter. Both sellers knew what they were doing however, and despite a week in the mail and cold weather, the fish all arrived alive. The boxes were all well insulated, and despite the heatpacks having died days prior, they maintained enough heat to keep the fish from freezing. I still am not ordering any more live fish for the year, holiday delays and cold weather is just too risky a combo for me to see how much further than a week fish can spend in a bag in a box.

I have 7 SAE that reside together in a tank. I tried this myself, and found they do best solo, or in a group. Otherwise they just quarreled with each other all the time. One was fine, two fought with each other non stop. Three wasn't good either in my case, two teamed up against the smallest one and harassed it constantly. I got two more to bring my number to five and suddenly there was peace, they all schooled together and stop trying to throw each other into the tank walls. I had two in another tank, and when I broke that tank down I added them into the tank with five to bring the number to seven - they now all school together peacefully as well. So my usual go to recommendation with SAE is one, or 5+.

Yes they eat staghorn too! They prefer BBA (okay that just seems so wrong to type. 'Prefer' and 'BBA' should never go together) but once that's gone its onto the staghorn. Any hair type algae I've had they consumed to a point of completely wiping it out. As Ryan S. and Pete also said, they do occasionally put a hole in or rip the edge or tip of a leaf. In my case, I found they did so primarily from trying to rip a piece of BBA off a leaf. They grab a mouthful of it, and if it doesn't come right off, they will thrash their whole body to forcibly remove the BBA. Sometimes the plant's leaf is already weak enough that instead of getting the algae off the leaf, they just rip a hole in the leaf. But on the note of them going after other fish, again, maybe I just got the evil crazy batch. But they would chase other fish down and just like they'd bite off mouthfuls of BBA, they bit pieces out of my other fish's fins. Look at the dorsal and caudal of my kinked loach. Those semicircular chunks missing? That's the bite of a flagfish. @NBrucker Otos don't eat BBA. They eat diatoms. They'd be worth their weight in gold if they ate BBA too. Alas, we aren't so lucky.

The best fish for eating BBA that I've ever found are American Flagfish. They aren't a 'sucker' type fish at all. But they go after BBA like its some kind of caviar to them. They grab it and bite pieces off of covered leaves or decorations, grazing on it like famished cows until there is no more. Seriously, this is the stare of an underwater cow.... with mad cow disease. Just bear in mind, they aren't nice fish. At least not in my experience. They don't get big, perhaps 2" tops, but I recommend letting them take care of the BBA without any other fish in the tank. And then once the BBA is gone, put them in a species only tank or take them back to the store. Mine ate ever speck off BBA they found, and then went after the swordtails, the guppies, the dojo loaches, the kuhli loaches, the angelfish and the rainbow shark. Two tanks I put them in. Once the BBA was gone, they went after their tankmates. Maybe I just had terrible luck and brought home the crazy bunch of flagfish. But I'd recommend caution with them if you decide to try them. Yes they eat BBA. But are they worth the trouble?

Poor Dragon. It was a valiant effort, but your head bobbing game just wasn't strong enough for Pyewacket.

Asian Arrowana - its illegal to keep them in the US. Polypterus Bichir Bichir/polypterus ansorgii/polypterus congicus - these three big boys are the largest of the bichir family and while I have a 220 they could enjoy, I feel I want to go even bigger for them, and I wouldn't be able to put them in the 220 until its other occupants aged out - my pictus catfish are closing in on two decades old but they haven't slowed down in the slightest.

Perhaps zebra danios and apisto borelli? Easy cool water tank that won't need much in the way of heating so long as your house temps don't swing wildly. You could also try paradise gourami, they're easy to breed and quite gorgeous. Though if you did those with danios, expect them to eat the danio fry. The adults should be safe though. Along the cool water theme one could also breed panda corydoras or paleatus corydoras. You'll just want plenty of plants with whatever species you go with, to give the eggs and fry cover.

Wow! Do you have any info on what those decorations are? Because I could see some plecos and cichlids that would love those. They also look like a natural enough shape they could blend nicely into a planted tank.

Its also just as volatile, I just wish the rat world had a place as respectful and open as the Aquarium Co-Op forum! Today was rat day for me. Tubs cleaned, babies sorted. Tomorrow will be tank day, I plan to trim and relocate some jungle val from my 58 gallon which has sent out a ton of runners. The rats of course, get all of the trimmings as snacks while the new plants will likely go to the 220 to continue filling that in.

I wouldn't do two different species of barbs in a tank this size. Tiger barbs especially benefit best from being in large schools of their own kinds. It tends to keep them better focused on themselves and not the other fish in the tank. 12 tiger barbs would be a trip to watch, they're active fish.

@Grey You could keep just a single specimen of an African cichlid in a tank. Just be aware that with peacocks, the answer is basically 1, 1 male and several females, or many and all different species. And this is because of agression levels. You have to spread the agression across many fish. With just a couple, the strongest will pick out one fish it particularly hates, and beat them up until they kill it. And then they'll pick the next fish that looked at them wrong and start all over. With overstocked african cichlids, they have a much harder time being able to focus on 'just that one particular hated mortal enemy' and instead can only grump at one fish, it moves, and if they give chase they tend to quickly lose it in the swarm of other cichlids. Which type of catfish? There's alot that get called upside down catfish. Synodontis petricola or s. lucipinnis will stay small (4" or so), and are social and would appreciate a group of their own kind. If you wanted just a single catfish (that's also pretty personable when it gets larger) get something like synodontis eupterus. They don't like sharing space with their own kind, but are fine with non-catfish. And they can become more outgoing and willing to hand feed when larger.

I let my IT engineer of a husband see it. The cables don't stay disorganized after that xD velcro loop straps and name tag identifiers for each cord, all going to a power strip mounted inside the stands.

Like Daniel, I've kept bettas at 82 without issue. I kept them quite commonly at 80+ temps, as I found their fins healed faster at higher temps. And bettas pretty much always come from LFS with torn fins/fin rot.

So at this point in time you are doing a fish in cycle. The numbers are reading high because whatever a fish eats, comes out as waste. 50 cichlids is a lot, so its a lot of waste. I'd try to keep those numbers lower while you rebuild the BB as otherwise you're likely to give the fish ammonia burns or worse with numbers staying that high. So test the water every other day or so for the next month or however long it takes that cycle to get going and caught up. Do water changes every other day to keep the levels more reasonable. Try and keep ammonia and nitrite as low as you can. Does daily with prime to keep the ammonia neutralized so long as you are reading any number higher than .5 on the ammonia test - this is to help prevent ammonia burns on the fish. Its not fool proof long term, but hopefully this won't take long. I say hopefully, because your tests show you have nitrates in the water - this means there's got to be some BB left. Just probably not enough to handle the full load of all the cichlids. So, until the BB builds back up to sufficient numbers, you'll also have ammonia and nitrates - so you have to do water changes to combat those. With any luck, your continued testing will show the nitrates remaining higher (relatively. Ideally a good cycled tank is usually considered to keep the nitrates under 40ppm) while ammonia and nitrite drops off as you continue to do water changes. If the nitrates are still above 40ppm, its time to do another water change to help bring those numbers down. Keep an eye on your fish. If you notice lots of rapid breathing, or holding gills open with lots of redness in the gills, this is likely ammonia burns, so a water change needs to happen to bring it back down to levels they don't find as stressful.