5 Gal Stocking Suggestions

[StrangePanthers]

Background: I am a college student in Wisconsin with a gravel-planted, 5.2-gallon Imaginarium cube. I also have a few pieces of driftwood in the tank as well.

Question: What should I put into my 5.2 gal tank?

I've heavily considered keeping a betta since I have the food and supplies for it. However, I've also considered keeping shrimp, or shrimp, and a betta (female). The reason for wanting to keep shrimp stems from my slight algae problem. From the looks of it, it's just brown algae, and that's fine except I don't like how it looks and I would hate to have it get out of control.

There are a few issues with keeping shrimp:
- They'll breed (and I won't know what to do with the overload)
- My Imagitarium filter is built-in and I'd have to modify it somehow so that the shrimp don't get sucked up and ground to pieces.
- They require additional food, algae-based food, which might make the algae problem worse. (i.e. introducing green algae to the tank)
- They're cold water "fish", and bettas are tropical fish.
- The betta may eat the shrimp, leaving me out some money and back to square one- dealing with algae.

Note: I would appreciate any other fish suggestions that would partner well with a female betta. Also, other algae eaters and/ or recommended food for them. Thank You.

 

[Pisces_Girl01]

You might want to try a snail to help with algae... there's no guarantee that your Betta will get along with it or any other fish for that matter.

 

[jake37]

In a 5 gallon aquarium I would not add additional fishes with a betta even a female. Most of the smaller fishes (like ember) are going to want cooler water and a group of 5 or 6.

Also many new tanks develop diatom (brown algae); it will go away in a few weeks on its own once the aquarium stabalizes.

Shrimp are perfect for small aquariums because they have extremely low bio-load. Given that shrimp are relatively expensive if they breed successfully you should be able to find other people in your area that would take them off your hand.

You might consider a single male betta; a pair of dario dario (these require live food); peacock gudgeon; trio of sparkling gourami.

5 gallon aquarium are not great given the limited size for fishes (though I have a neon and 4 ember tetra in mine; plus some young borelli apisto i'm growing out; so maybe i shouldn't talk).

One of the problem with 5 gallon aquarium is keeping the water clean and stable so you don't wnat to put too many fishes in your aquarium (i'm doing 3 water changes a week); and being a small aquarium they will tend to have wide swings in temperature.

Anyway you do not want to overstock a 5 gallon.

 

[ADsnail]

If your reason for shrimp is algae, snails, especially nerite snails, are a good solution. They keep a tank sparkling and no need to add an intake sponge filter or netting to prevent them being sucked up. One of my smaller tanks is a planted 5.5g with one male betta and two nerite snails. They balance each other well and the tank is crystal clear, no algae on the glass, no water odor.