fish suggestions to add into 55 gal community tank

[alumpo]

Hello everyone! I am looking to add more fish into my community tank soon. The tank currently has:
1 gold gourami
1 pearl gourami
10 golden barbs
 

I would preferably want to add in bottom dwellers, but all suggestions are welcome. 

[Fish Folk]

First off, I'd love to see you LOAD UP on some choice plants for the bottom third. I recently fed fish for a friend who had a large community tank with a blue background like yours. Here's what his tank looked like...

Lots of established Anubias (one rhizome since mid 1980s). Loads of Bronze Crypt. Random skiff of Java moss. With planting like this, you can get away with SO MUCH by way of stocking. Not only are plants naturally filtering for you, but they are also providing ample hiding places for loads of fish. He had rainbow sharks, Electric Blue Acaras (from me), Neon Tetras, Angelfish, Barbs, Candy-cane Tetras, other Tetras I can't remember themes of, at least one Golden Barb like you've got there . . . I'm sure a bunch more I can't recall.

If you need to get a deeper substrate, you can add some standard pea-gravel on top of your sand. Maybe not your favorite look, but plant roots won't get bound up in it like they might in some sand. 

 

 

[Scapexghost]

Pick your flavor of cories. Could get 20 easily

[alumpo]

On 7/1/2022 at 8:48 PM, Fish Folk said:

First off, I'd love to see you LOAD UP on some choice plants for the bottom third. I recently fed fish for a friend who had a large community tank with a blue background like yours. Here's what his tank looked like...

Lots of established Anubias (one rhizome since mid 1980s). Loads of Bronze Crypt. Random skiff of Java moss. With planting like this, you can get away with SO MUCH by way of stocking. Not only are plants naturally filtering for you, but they are also providing ample hiding places for loads of fish. He had rainbow sharks, Electric Blue Acaras (from me), Neon Tetras, Angelfish, Barbs, Candy-cane Tetras, other Tetras I can't remember themes of, at least one Golden Barb like you've got there . . . I'm sure a bunch more I can't recall.

If you need to get a deeper substrate, you can add some standard pea-gravel on top of your sand. Maybe not your favorite look, but plant roots won't get bound up in it like they might in some sand. 

 

 

 In the tank I have a pretty good amount of anacharis and hornwort floating around and a medium size Anubias, it just wasn't in frame. I am definitely going to add more plants but unfortunately at my LFS the plants that are in stock are pretty expensive or damaged/unhealthy. Also, I absolutely love the look of those electric blue acaras and was wondering if I could add them into my tank without any problems.

[Beardedbillygoat1975]

You could add EBAs to that tank. Gouramis hold their own and gold barbs are pretty hardy and fast enough to avoid them. 

[Fish Folk]

On 7/2/2022 at 12:08 AM, alumpo said:

 In the tank I have a pretty good amount of anacharis and hornwort floating around and a medium size Anubias, it just wasn't in frame. I am definitely going to add more plants but unfortunately at my LFS the plants that are in stock are pretty expensive or damaged/unhealthy. Also, I absolutely love the look of those electric blue acaras and was wondering if I could add them into my tank without any problems.

Agreed with @Beardedbillygoat1975 EBAs are pretty versatile. When spawning, they'll get feisty, but typically only towards con-specific species.

On a related note . . . I am selling all of my EBAs tomorrow. ca. 100x, including my Breeders. They've been a tremendous project! But I cannot keep them long term in their quarters without more tanks -- and I'm maxed out on tanks. Here's me sayin' bye to the blues...

[Troy328]

Wow, this is so funny, because I'm also setting up a 55 Gallon community tank, and I was also looking for bottom dweller suggestions! One of the best suggestions I got so far was Zebra Loaches. I'm still doing research on them myself, so I can't speak to how well they would do from experience, but they might be worth looking into for you as well, because our setups involve very similar fish (You have Gold Barbs, I have Cherry Barbs. You have a Pearl and Gold Gourami, I am planning on getting a couple of Honey Gouramis.)

 

Best of luck with your tank! Seems like you have a great group so far!