5gal stocking suggestions *groan...*

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

TankGirl

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
May 5, 2003
Messages
8,974
Location
Richmond VA
I know that this type of small tank stocking question goes around from time to time, but rather than just put in it the things I usually suggest, I thought I would get some fresh opinions.

My daughter has given up on hermit crabs and is giving me her 5gal. I have no business setting up a tank now, but it is so small it is not a problem for me to move. I will, of course, completely sterilize this tank and seed it with gravel, filter media and a fake plant to start. It has an incandescent fixture, so I will probably put in a pigtail fluorescent bulb and try some crypts, depending upon what fish or other creature I put in there. I have a Penguin mini for filtration.

The first thing to mind is a betta, but what else? I am getting some Endler's livebearer's next week but they are going in the 12-gal, and I don't really want to put a small schooling type in the 5. Any oddballs come to mind?
 
Yep, why not try keeping some of the killifish? I've always wanted to try my hand at that. A lot of pple at the GCAS are into them and they're just soooo colorful. :D

eg. Nothobranchius
 
I have a paradise fish (M. opercularis) in a 5g and I find it far more interesting to watch than a betta. Mine is very active and essentially zooms himself around the tank the entire time. I imagine you could keep an African dwarf frog or some of the freshwater shrimp varieties in there too, though I'm not certain about the frog. Anyone want to chime in on that?
 
Or a shortfinned betta a half moon plakat gives you brilliant color and movement...or a species betta like a coccina (bright red with a peacock spot on side). heh.
Just as fancy betta can be boring..not all paradise fish are created equal.....
Why get a plain ol paradise fish that was bred and raised the same as most splendens....break the mold!

Killis are cute.

Try a pair of round tail paradise fish (m chinisis) and some otos instead..the won't even require a heater if your house doesn't fall below 50. they are even kept in ponds where it is mild. And their display colors more than make up for the velvet gray with cream mottles...Which is still attractive.

A Dwarf Gourami or 3 (depends on actual surface area to provided cover for pecking order) and some cories.

or a trio of croaking gourami..then they can sing to you in spring... :D

And labyrinth's will forgive you in a 5 gallon if you change a couple days late..
 
I have kept dwarf gouramis in a 10 and I have one in my 55 community, so I probably won't do that, but killies certainly are colorful and interesting, though I am a bit put off by their annual nature.

I have not seen the croaking gourami locally - are you breeding them, Christmasfish? That is a very interesting fish, to be sure.
 
I saw some amazing killifish at a fish auction. The common name was orange spotless, I wrote down the scientific name, but that's at home. Let me know if you want it. It was something along the lines of ? Australe.
 
Tankgirl--I picked up a really cheap 10 gal tank($10) at a garage sale. When you say sterilize it --how do you do that? So far I have just scrubbed it with bleach water & it is sitting to dry now. I also thin it should be resealed on the seams(just my feelings) even though when I had the bleach water sitting in it --it didn't appear to be leaking.

Also when you state 'seed with rocks' what are you referring to. There were rocks with the tank but I am not sure I trust the rocks. So I am debating about new gravel from the lfs or maybe just boiling these. As to why I don't trust the rocks that came with the tank--they are reds & blues in color & shiny.

Thanks in advance
 
Jaowl-
You did exactly what I do to sterilize a tank. I use a weak bleach and water solution and soak it for an hour or so, then rinse it, rinse it, rinse it. Then I fill it and use an overdose of dechlorinator and let that sit for an hour or so, empty and then fill and set up the tank as usual.

If the silicone seals appear cracked or uneven, or otherwise damaged, then it might be a good idea to re-seal it. It is no fun to clean up that mess, even only 10 gals! In the Articles section of this site I think there is one about resealing a tank, not sure.

When I seed a tank I take gravel, decorations or filter media from a mature tank and set up the new tank with that, and add the fish right away, so that the bacterial colonies in the objects from the other tank can grow in the new tank. That helps skip the cycle that you otherwise have to go through for a new tank, and saves you from having to buy BioSpira to cycle instantly. You still have to watch the parameters, because there might not have been enough bacteria, but often for a small tank it works like a champ.

The colored rocks that came with the tank can be sterilized with the tank, with the bleach solution. I would not boil colored rocks like that, because they are epoxy coated (often the natural colored ones are epoxy coated as well), but I would pour water just off the boil over them. I think bleach works just as well. I would not use gravel from an unknown source to seed a tank, because there could be parasites and all kinds of nasties in the gravel. I just seed with gravel from my own tanks that are free of disease or illness.
 
Heh..though I plan to breed my croakers and see if I can bring up the wild color better..I doubt I will have fry for some time. I am just not set up for it!
and i don't have the same stuff as my gramps so I'll prolly hit and miss ti li remeber everything like. I did get the lat two good looking gourami females. now that that there are only a 1/3 of them left they are ripping each other to pieces!
 
Here is a (blurry as usual) pic of the 5gal, without any inhabitants. I have put some java moss, anacharis, dwarf lillies, java fern, water sprite and creeping charlie (aquatic mint) in there with some fluorite/gravel substrate and a Hagen CO2 system, with a 13w pigtail fluorescent. When I come across the perfect fish/frog/what have you, I will plunk them in there.

normal_5gal%20Mar2004.jpg
 
Wow; wanna come decorate my tanks TankGirl? LOL

Heh, and yeah Xmasfish. Those damned flagfish tore up my planted 10g. They will be finding a new home shortly.
 
No flags - I have certainly heard enough stories about them and plants!

I decided to go planted when my husband put the 13w fluorescent in there. I had the tubular incandescent and I told him one of those pigtail fluoro's would not fit, being too bulky. He proved me wrong, so I figured I would try to go "bonsai" and keep small plants. I went ahead and put the CO2 in (since it was collecting dust anyway) so I can maybe prevent algae from growing from the start. I had a half of a bag of fluorite sitting around, so when I saw that piece of Swahala wood at the LFS that pretty much cinched it. I think a paradise fish or something would be lovely, but even some shrimp and a couple of frogs sounds appeaaling - will frogs eat shrimp?

Also, about frogs, they mostly sit around, do they not? I wanted to have some activity in there but those dwarf clawed frogs are so cute.

We just put an offer on a house today and I am a nervous wreck, so I am trying to distract myself..... :?
 
You would want a dwarf African frog (Hymenochirus boettgeri), not an African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis). The dwarves should have webbing on their front feet, whereas the African clawed frog's feet tend to be "pointy-looking." Dwarves also don't come in albino that I have seen, while clawed frogs do.

I think you know that, but I just thought it would be good to clarify for anyone reading the thread who doesn't. =)

Edit: Also, I might worry more about the paradise fish and the shrimp than the frogs and the shrimp.
 
Hypostomus - thanks for the clarification! I have never kept frogs and I knew there were 2 kinds, but could not remember the distinctions. So often fish are mislabeled at the LFS, so it is good to know. No claws!

If I went with the paradise fish I probably would skip the shrimp, since the fish would provide movement, but if I go with frogs then I would like the shrimp for some movement.
 
Back
Top Bottom