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Fish for every tank! (but not that one)


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I have finally caught up to the new hobby enthusiasm! Every tank that I set up over the last two-ish months with the intent of housing fish now has fish! Which means I'm allowed to set up a new tank now, right? 😅

 

My first tank was a 20 high and currently has 3 honey gourami, two males and a female that have been in there for just about a month. The bigger male just wants to flirt his little fins off, but the smaller male is very food aggressive and is stressing the poor single lady by chasing her off anytime he even thinks there might be food in the offing. So, he might get moved to a different tank, but we'll see how things go. I'm hoping that adding another type of fish will help cut down on the targeted aggression. But otherwise very pleased with this tank overall, slowly filling in plants as things grow out and get trimmed, the only issue is the floating plants keep trying to take over the world.

I keep going back and forth on what other fish I want to add, though, any suggestions?

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Second tank was a 10gal, originally set up for a betta that jumped out overnight and didn't survive the experience. Currently housing 8 ember tetras and an absolute chonker of a bladder snail, with the tentative plan to try for a small community that includes a new betta. We'll see how that goes if I get there. These guys are pretty fun on their own, though I swear they're scared of their own shadows, even after two and a half weeks. I had to sit for like, five minutes before I got this shot and even then, I didn't get all of them in the shot. I'm considering scrapping the community idea and going back to the store to get whatever they have left of the embers and just having like, 15 of them in here (with some shrimp maybe??), see if that helps make them more brave during daylight hours. If I move that one honey gourami into here, I wonder if he'll terrorize them further or if they'll balance each other out? Hm.

(One of the embers really loves the betta log, by the way, she just hangs out in it every evening/night and even if I don't put another betta in here, I'll probably leave the log. I'd feel bad for taking it away at this point LOL)

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Third tank is another 10gal and is a week into having 7 white cloud mountain minnows. I was originally going to get the gold variation, but the LFS only had four and one of them looked weirdly skinny, so I wasn't sure I wanted to go that route, all things considered. The regular ones looked great, though, so I got all of them. These guys have been so much fun! Super great eaters, not at all scared, swimming all over the tank., and they'll come up to the glass if I wiggle my fingers at them. Love them to bits. I keep going back and forth on whether I want to try a single hillstream loach in here or if I should just get a couple amano shrimp or something instead, but this tank was always intended to be just white clouds and some sort of algae/cleanup crew, so I'm in no hurry to add to it. Just waiting for the plants to grow in proper. Don't mind the seemingly random sponge filter, it's just prep work for a quarantine tank (and also conveniently blocking the crypt that's having a meltdown right behind it lmao).

Not pictured: the five runners that the dwarf chain sword in the back has put out. I'm so proud.

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And then there's the 2.5, which does not have any fish. I set this up as a bit of an experiment to see if I could do a monte carlo carpet without CO2 and to satisfy that new-to-aquascaping urge to make an iwagumi scape, and it has mostly proven very good at growing algae and duckweed (the duckweed was intentional, for once). A big ("big") water change and the duckweed seem to be helping keep nutrients and such in check, so I might see the algae clear up a bit more, but there is a lot of oxygen in there (everyone loves to see pearling, but they never think to warn you about pearling algae) and it does get a fair bit of indirect light. There are also unidentified snails in there that I'm pretty sure hitch-hiked with the monte carlo. I thought originally they were mystery snails, but the largest one hasn't gotten bigger than a quarter inch and they're reproducing, so not mysteries, just. A mystery. Really flat-looking shell, too, remind me of the snails you'd find in the garden. Except they're in water. I have no idea. The monte carlo is, in fact, growing and, hopefully, will carpet out nicely. If I ever get shrimp, it will be very tempting to stick like, two in here, see if they can deal with any remaining algae. But that's the total extent of my plans for any sort of non-snail creature in here, it's otherwise just a little water garden for me to admire and make excuses to not do water changes on, despite it being literally right next to a sink.

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I love your tanks! Here are some suggestions of what I might do if I were in your shoes. 

1) 20 Gallon High: Since you already have yellow, I think a nice school of 10-15 Neon tetras would look good (adding blue and red). A school of Chili rasboras could also give you that wow factor. I would also consider having some corydoras on the bottom like Sterbai corydoras or albino corydoras if that's your style. 

2) 10 Gallon w/ Embers: I think the single male honey gourami would love it in here! Especially with an established school, they should get along fine. If you were going the shrimp route, I would definitely suggest blue dream or blue velvet shrimp (already have reddish orange with the embers). 

3) Amano shrimp sound good. You can also look into borneo sucker loaches that stay quite a bit smaller than the reticulated hill stream loaches. If you added a river stone pile in a corner, you could even breed them! You could also consider rosy loaches in there, I think that would liven up the bottom. 

4) I think this would be a really cute shrimp tank if you ever wanted to go down that route (with caution in such a small volume of water), but it can definitely be done. 

Good luck!

Edited by AnimalNerd98
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On 8/9/2022 at 11:36 PM, AnimalNerd98 said:

1) 20 Gallon High: Since you already have yellow, I think a nice school of 10-15 Neon tetras would look good (adding blue and red). A school of Chili rasboras could also give you that wow factor. I would also consider having some corydoras on the bottom like Sterbai corydoras or albino corydoras if that's your style.

Oh, man, that would be so many chili rasboras, if I did that, which would actually be really cool. Hm. I was originally considering a neon, though, either regular neons or the green neons. Might have to go stare at the LFS for a bit. And cories were definitely a consideration, I love how cute they are, so I'll have to see if sterbai are available locally or if albino will be the better option.

 

On 8/9/2022 at 11:36 PM, AnimalNerd98 said:

2) 10 Gallon w/ Embers: I think the single male honey gourami would love it in here! Especially with an established school, they should get along fine. If you were going the shrimp route, I would definitely suggest blue dream or blue velvet shrimp (already have reddish orange with the embers).

I was recently thinking about blue shrimp, actually! I really love the orange versions, but you're right that it would definitely be too much orange-red in one tank. Blue would be very nice and contrast-y. I might see how the 20gal shapes up with more fish before I make a decision on moving the honey, but good to get a second opinion on it being a decent option.

 

On 8/9/2022 at 11:36 PM, AnimalNerd98 said:

3) Amano shrimp sound good. You can also look into borneo sucker loaches that stay quite a bit smaller than the reticulated hill stream loaches. If you added a river stone pile in a corner, you could even breed them! You could also consider rosy loaches in there, I think that would liven up the bottom. 

I'll have to take a look at the borneo loaches, then! I haven't seen rosy loaches at any of my local stores, but I also haven't been looking, so I'll have to check for them. At the very least, amano shrimp are always available ahaha.

 

On 8/9/2022 at 11:36 PM, AnimalNerd98 said:

4) I think this would be a really cute shrimp tank if you ever wanted to go down that route (with caution in such a small volume of water), but it can definitely be done. 

Oh, yeah, if I decided to put any shrimp in there, I would be paying much more attention to, uh, everything about it lol. I haven't even bothered testing parameters at all, since there wasn't anything in there that would care. But I expect that's a ways off, anyway. It would be cute with a few little shrimp climbing over the rocks, though, wouldn't it? 😄

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll definitely have to take a look at a couple of these options!

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