About to start a brand new 20g long tank, recommend me EVERYTHING!

[bugjuice]

Hi friends, I inherited my brother's old Gold Spotted Dwarf Pleco. He's currently being kept in my 3g tank by himself while I work on setting up a 20g long tank I've acquired. He was previously in a 30g community tank. He's approx 6 years old at this point and was the last survivor from the original tank as we didn't repopulate it when a fish passed.

He's incredibly shy. His favorite spot is a SpongeBob SquarePants pineapple where you can reliably find him in the daytime. He explores at night (I assume as I've caught him twice now). As this was my brother's fish I've only just learned that they should be kept in groups of at least 3 and I feel terrible that he's been alone so long.

What I'm asking of you guys is to help me with choosing tank mates and tank setup.

Current setup:

20g long, Aquaclear 50g power filter, Aqueon Optibright LED Light, heater, and glass lid.

The only tank mates I know I want to have are ember tetras and harlequins rasboras. Looking into Dwarf Gouramis as well. Other than that I'm very open to suggestions on tank mates. I like small, colorful fish and would prefer to keep this as a very peaceful community tank. I'm interested in shrimp also, but I've never had any before.

I would like to get more plecos, but I'm not sure which plecos would get along best with my gold spotted or if I should try to find other gold spotted plecos.

Another question, the filter is from the old tank, should I keep the filter media or should I replace it?

Thank you in advance guys I appreciate it so much!!

 

[Danio8]

First, definitely keep the filter media. It holds a lot of the good bacteria. If you replace it, you will have to cycle your tank.

Second, If you do decide to get another pleco, I would say get another dwarf gold spot or maybe a bristlenose. Make sure not to get a common pleco.

Third, neon tetras are a beautiful fish (in my opinion). You could fit 5 Rasboras, 5 ember tetras, 5 neon tetras, and 1 or 2 SMALL plecos.

Make sure your tank is cycled before adding all the fish.

Hope this helps. Good Luck!

 

[ColdKoi]

I don’t think I’d recommend adding another pleco to a 20g, that’s just a lot of fish (size and bio load) for a small tank if you want to populate it with many other species

Definitely keep the old filter as long as it hasn’t been left to dry out or anything. The filter media is the lifeblood of the system, basically dropping a used/cycled filter onto a brand new aquarium will instantly cycle that aquarium and make it fish safe. But don’t get this confused with a seasoned and mature aquarium, you’ll likely still easily end up with algae blooms and all the other fun stuff associated with a new setup!