couple more fish gonna work?

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.

cogburn

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Feb 5, 2008
Messages
492
Location
bangor, pa
alrighty im sure youre all sick of hearing about this 150 gallon tank im getting in a few months... but im still asking about it... my stock list will be 1 tiger oscar, 1 albino oscar, 1 banded leporinus, 6 tinfoil barbs... but... im really diggin clown loaches... do you think i can still get away with adding a few... maybe 4? they get big i know but i think i have the tank space for it... and i will be filtrated well... probably around 750-800gph between 2 canister filters... what do you all think?
 
With juveniles, you may be ok....but as they grow???
I don't think so...the oscars and lep. are going to hit 12" at least each, and the barbs can get up to 14" (they do school, so your qty. of 6 is great-but the adult size will be an issue)...
Maybe choose a smaller schooling fish (3" adult size so oscars couldn't eat them) that were aggressive enough to hold their own, but not fin nippers that would pester your oscars as they got larger/slower.
While clowns will rapidly hit 5", they will then continue to slowly grow 12-16"....that's a 123-ish inches of adult fish combined with that list!

If you go by the 1.5" of fw fish per gallon "rule", with monster fish, you are pushing it IMO. I say stick to about 3-5" of adult fish per gallon (giving you roughly 30-50" of fish), since they need so much more room to move around than other fw fish, many of which don't get over 5-6"...
Many of the larger fish are also messier eaters, and we all know that larger fish mean larger poop :rolleyes:, and that they require much more dilligent pwc's, and filter maint.

I generally think Oscars should be species only, or at least stay with other SA Cichlids...from past family experience they do well with Angels, and I have seen them successfully housed with green terrors, an arrowanna, and even a jack dempsey, but I don't personally know about other species.

If it were me, I'd go with one oscar, 2 clowns, and a small school of less-aggressive barbs...or 2 oscars, 2 angels, and a clown.

...maybe someone who has more experience with SA cichlids will speak up, as most of mine is with Africans.

Good luck, and I hope I helped in some way!
;)~Sarah
 
Back
Top Bottom