ideas for a new tank?

[cinnamaldehyde]

Hi fellow fish-lovers

I just bought a 26gal bowfront tank for our boys' room. We currently have the bigger biorb in there, but I find that tank to be a royal pain in the butt. Found a great deal on an Aqueon kit ($77 CDN for tank, heater, filter, light, canopy and gravel!). I prefer AC filters but this will do for this tank. I'm going to put a couple airstones in and we still have to decide on decorations and plants (fake).

In our biorb we have a small menagerie with one swordtail, one harlequin rasbora, and three algae shrimp, so they'll be moving to the new tank once it's ready.

We've had lots of tanks before but I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to stock with... it's a fairly tall tank for it's size (21" high), and we've got a blue background on it with turquoise gravel.

Ideas?

Thanks!

 

[CoryFan]

With a tall tank, it is fun to have either fish that explore all over, or a type for each level. For example, Harlequins are top-swimmers.
How wide and deep is it?
Do you want anything in particular?

 

[cinnamaldehyde]

With a tall tank, it is fun to have either fish that explore all over, or a type for each level. For example, Harlequins are top-swimmers.
How wide and deep is it?
Do you want anything in particular?

It's 24" x 15" by 21" high.

I am at a total loss for what to do with it! I've always had fairly concrete ideas for what I wanted to put in a tank. The only thing we want is some more shrimp as they are totally fascinating.

I'm pretty experienced with freshwater tanks, so pretty much anything goes! Probably more bright, active fish as it's in my boys' room and they're 8 and 5. There might be spongebob decorations going into it :/

 

[2manyFish]

I like my columbian tetra. They swim all over and are a good size and the silvery blue/red makes them pop in the tank.

 

[calfishguy]

How about blueberry shrimp a dwarf gourami, a large school of neons 8+ and some dwarf rainbows. Or if you want to skip the shrimp get a ram instead of the gourami. If you want something totally different why not a species only dwarf puffer tank.

 

[cinnamaldehyde]

I like the idea of more shrimp - probably not blueberry though as I don't know if they'd show up against the gravel and background.

Would cherry shrimp hybridize with my algae shrimp? I think I'd read somewhere that some shrimp can hybridize with other species.

I'm thinking a school of black neons would be nice and show up nicely.

Would rams eat the shrimp?

Thanks!

 

[CoryFan]

Ideas:

Harlequin rasboras for top
Lemon tetra for middle
Red minor aka serpae tetra for lower
- the lemons and serpaes do sometimes merge into one tall school which is fun.
- longfin serpaes are pretty too.
- the red/yellow/red layers might look great with spongebob.

Fun action in a bottom dweller that is different:
cory catfish - all kinds of looks.
Kuhli loaches - striped or black.
Both like groups but do not "school" and both play or dance! YouTube "kuhli dance" for examples.

Edit: I missed a couple posts while typing this. Ha ha!

 

[calfishguy]

I like the idea of more shrimp - probably not blueberry though as I don't know if they'd show up against the gravel and background.

Would cherry shrimp hybridize with my algae shrimp? I think I'd read somewhere that some shrimp can hybridize with other species.

I'm thinking a school of black neons would be nice and show up nicely.

Would rams eat the shrimp?

Thanks!

Cherry shrimp and algae shrimp should work together I think. Some rams eat shrimp while others don't its hit and miss. They will eat baby shrimp though.