Personally I'm a little skeptical of people saying cories need to be kept in schools of 5+. I've got pandas, and they're adorable, and sometimes they pile up on each other in the corner or line up in a row, but for the most part they're just each doing their own thing. They don't exactly school.
My biggest concern would be the initial shock of being moved, especialy on small cories. When I got mine, they were all very small. They seemed to become acclimated and start eating in the order of how big they were. The largest one was really active after just a few days. The smallest one never ate and mostly just sat still and died after a week. Talking to people at the LFS, they've had massive losses with the smaller cories and few with larger ones.
I've never heard of cories doing much actual schooling like rasboras or tetras would, but getting a larger group should make them more comfortable. If you're just going to get one, I'd at least make sure it's a nearly full-grown one.
Swimmer32 said:
I don't really want a whole shoal though. Maybe a couple at most. Would they be happy as a couple?
I really want the remaining amount of fish I can have in the tank to be free swimming, and want to be the focus of the tank.
My concern with the Angel fish is that I've read they view smaller fish as food.
Would the Tetras and Danios be safe?
I don't think two cories would be any big problem ... but they do disappear from time to time and just lay in the back and hide, so if you want them to be visible you'll probably end up wanting 3 or 4.
I doubt you'd have to worry too much about any of the
Hyphessobrycon tetras (Lemon/Phandom/Flame/Serpae) being eaten by an angel ... they're pretty tough, and I can't think of when I've seen anybody have problems with them. And the danios are a lot zippier than the angel, too, and I would actually be more concerned with the danios nipping at the angels.
Then again, there seem to be a lot of people around here who have experience with angry angels, so I don't know.
