what to do? o 29 gallon!

[Oceangirl]

I currently have
8 cories of varieties
3 female platy's
3 live endlers (They just had to come home with me! They begged me!) males
2 female guppies
(The male endlers have no interest in the female, they are VERY colorful. Thinks their boy guppies!)

What to put in the tank?

29 gallon
Perfecto full fluorescent hood
Aquaclear 70
Blue sand
working on getting it planted!!


I need something that would not EAT the Endlers, I have lots of room. I was looking at celestial rasboras, but they are a little expensive. I had neons, black neons, but they seemed to like eating fry and I am afraid for my endlers. My remaining platys 1st thing they did was try to eat the endlers! HELP!

 

[Wroberson]

It's hard to tell people what they can do with a tank. I would tend to lean towards things I like. Live plants colorful fish, driftwood. Whenever I find I have a fish that bothers other fish outside their group, I return them to the petshop or give them away.

You have bottom feeders and mid-level swimmers. Hatchet fish should be safe with those mates and would spend most of the time at the top of the water. Golden Kilifish also hang out up top and play nice with other fish. They are also very friendly, also petable. Betta should work well too. They have a reputation of fighting, but they rarely attack other fish. They come in an array of color too.

You've got a good filter for your tank so the water should be crystal clear 99% of the time. As for plants. I've always had great luck with those plant bulb packs. You can 5-6 plants for the 4 bucks and if the bulbs don;t grow, mail them back to the company and get free replacements. Whisteria is ugly to me, but the cousin, water sprite is awesome. Anubias have grown well for me.

Stick with low light plants for a while to see if the lights you have can support them. If you go for bunch plants and don't have enough light, the lower 1/2 of the plant will be leafless because the plant is trying to survive and will direct energy to save leaves closer to the light.

Owning an aquarium is very enjoyable other than making sure the water is clean, there's not much to it. Even testing the water is fun. Just keep the NO3 below 20ppm, and the water free of ammonia and nitrite and your fish should be healthy. To help control algae, PO4 should be as low as possible, around .5ppm.

 

[librarygirl]

Most fish will probably eat fry, that can't be avoided in a community setup, so if you want to keep babies the best thing to do is isolate them until they are large enough to go into a community tank. You could fit a school of 6-8 of something in there; most tetras or danios should work. I would not put a betta in there. As the livebearers breed though, you'll likely be overstocked at some point if you try to keep all of the babies!

 

[Hobgob]

I've noticed that my sturbai Cories dont eat fry. The one day I watched my Cories swimming around sifting the sand and what not. Then I noticed a baby krib near him probably two days out of the home. And well it sucked it up. It shot it out of its gills and that Cory swam to the other side of the tank so fast it was funny. And the baby way fine! Also I don't see pleco's eating them but they probably would by accident.
Like said above the best thing to do is isolate the fry it's really hard to have a community set up where nothing eats the fry. Unless the parents are going to keep everything away and take care of them I don't really see it happening.

You could try some of the Cories in the tank though and see what happens. If worst comes to worst just take them back out. You need to experiment sometimes.

 

[Oceangirl]

Now I am down another platy, she was too far gone. rest in peace PANDA girl. I think I am going to go all tetra. Petsmart has a GREAT sale 5 for 4.00 on black friday. They have mountain minnows, regular tetras, etc. Plus I am working on getting it planted, both plastic and real. I can't seem to find good, Hornwort, Wisteria, water sprite, and anacharis live anywhere. It either looks yuck/dead in the store, don't have it, or its in a yucky tank snail fish/sick tank.

I sOO wanted a betta, They had this one that look like an elephant ear.