Stocking suggestions for this 20 gallon cube?

[Surreal]

Hey all, I have this empty aquarium that I'm looking to get some stocking suggestions for. Right now I am leaning towards trying to breed some sort of pleco and celestial pearl danios in it as my first breeding project, but I am also considering just making this a planted pea puffer aquarium with ~6 pea puffers. Do any of y'all have any suggestions?

[Marcelo]

Are You Going to have plants ? Rocks or only fish ?

 

[Mmiller2001]

Cool tank. Perfect Dutch small scape for 12 small Rasbora.

[Surreal]

On 10/16/2023 at 7:40 PM, Marcelo said:

Are You Going to have plants ? Rocks or only fish ?

 

All up for debate really, I have a lot of hardscape, sand, potting soil, plants, etc. just laying around, but I'm not opposed to having a bare bottom tank for example if I'm breeding plecos.

On 10/16/2023 at 10:55 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

Cool tank. Perfect Dutch small scape for 12 small Rasbora.

Thanks! Definitely would want to get some sort of really small fish that I can have a large school of if I go the planted route.

[Surreal]

On 10/16/2023 at 7:40 PM, Marcelo said:

Are You Going to have plants ? Rocks or only fish ?

 

All up for debate really, I have a lot of hardscape, sand, potting soil, plants, etc. just laying around, but I'm not opposed to having a bare bottom tank for example if I'm breeding plecos.

On 10/16/2023 at 10:55 PM, Mmiller2001 said:

Cool tank. Perfect Dutch small scape for 12 small Rasbora.

Thanks! Definitely would want to get some sort of really small fish that I can have a large school of if I go the planted route.

[Marcelo]

but with a lot of shrimps instead 

Edited October 18, 2023 by Marcelo

[Jeff]

A great nano fish for that tank: Chili Rasboras. Highly recommend. 

[beastie]

I second any sort of micro rasbora, chilli, strwaberry, excalamation mark, kubotai, mosquito,.... With all of them though, floating plants. They do not do well in high light, they are pale, skittish. They however love low light dark shadowy places

There is a reddit with /boraras sub that has some even nice transformations of the fish coloring up after some tank changes. So if you wish to go this way, make sure to consider their needs, dark substrate, loads of plants, floating plants, low light

 

Otherwise a honey gourami, even for a breeding, scarlet badis if you make the scape for them, any of the luminatus we have discussed here in other threads, they will even breed for you. Sparkling gouramis breeding project could work ( check the youtube of floo the flowerhorn he did on sparklings and notice NO on the shrimps). Some of the smallest apistogramma, that are pair spawners could tolerate this size, depends on the hardscape. So many options

[Lennie]

I would make it a simple island scape in the middle, like these:

 

 

In terms of stocking; I probably wouldnt do pea puffers (as the tank is more of a cube instead of long, potential agression maybe? @Odd Duck what do you think?) or pleco breeding there (usually too messy and big in size, you should see the amount of poop in my fry tank) but CPD would be great I think. If you wanna go for a breeding project I would highly recommend going for one specific species instead of mixing many 

Pseudomugil is another one you may try to breed. Can be fun I suppose. I got myself a juvenile colony yesterday and they are super fun to watch already. Super excited to get them going.

I like sparkling gouramis. I think they are unique fish with interesting behavior and sound. 

 

Ofcourse you can always try a peaceful community tank. Like pygmy cories on bottom, cpds as schooling fish, and one centerpiece fish that would be suitable and that you like. 

[Odd Duck]

I think you could do a cube for pea puffers, but keep in mind, they are a species that pretty much requires live foods of multiple different types.  I have no less than 10 types of live foods that I raise now, which all started because of pea puffers.  You don’t absolutely have to have that many unless you plan to breed them, but you will want to keep at least 4-5 different types on hand.  Mine will never eat any dry foods, even the ones I raised from the eggs. They barely ate frozen bloodworms and frozen Daphnia and brine shrimp were both a hard no from them.  Wingless fruit flies were met with utter disdain like I had contaminated their tank with them.

You could potentially breed a pair of very small plecos, like my L519’s that only get to 3.5-4”long.  But that’s about the max for pleco size for a 20 cube since a cube has less square footage than a lower height tank.  My big blue eyed lemon bristlenose boys are tearing up my 100 gallon, mostly nanofish tank right now.  It’s been silted up for a couple weeks since they’ve both decided to dig wallows under my driftwood and I made the mistake of putting a thin layer of high iron, heavy clay dirt under the sand never dreaming these guys would decide to dig down almost 2” deep.  They’ve been in the tank about 2.5 years now and only started digging like this recently.  🤦🏻‍♀️ 

I really love the look of a bigger school of small fish in a cube like this.  It makes it feel like it’s a whole little world in there.  One school of tiny rasboras is a great idea.  You could also have a school of one of the dwarf Corydoras species with them.  Some Neocaridina shrimp, too.  Maybe a smaller shoal of some very small tetras, too, for a bit of contrast.  You can add more fine detail in your hardscape in a tank like this so it looks different from every angle, like the pics @Lennie posted.  You could also switch up and do some forced perspective tricks where you use bigger leaves towards the front and smaller leaves towards the back so the eye thinks the space is deeper than it is.  This works best when only viewed from the front, so keep that in mind when scaping - where is the tank going to be viewed from?

The species you like will determine what substrate you do (or don’t) use, what filter(s) you will use, what plants, what hardscape, etc.  I sometimes design a tank, then plan fish around it, but I usually pick fish, then design the tank for those fish.

[vividheckel]

On 10/17/2023 at 6:46 PM, Jeff said:

A great nano fish for that tank: Chili Rasboras. Highly recommend. 

I second this. Chili rasboras are always beautiful in a species tank.

[Schuyler]

On 10/18/2023 at 12:37 AM, beastie said:

With all of them though, floating plants.

Floating plants could get messy with that style of filter

[beastie]

One can always make a barrier or something out of airhose or a small portion? All i know all the microrasboras need floating plants/dimmed lights to thrive from all the info out there. 

[Lennie]

On 10/19/2023 at 10:41 PM, Schuyler said:

Floating plants could get messy with that style of filter

Maybe stuff like elodea or hornwort but not plants like frogbit salvinia etc