55G community ideas

[tapatte2]

Hey there! My parents have had a small 10g I got them about 8 years ago. Theres a small school of harlequin rasboras in there right now. My parents have recently expressed interest in upgrading to a 55g. I need some help picking out fish and what would work together and what would look good.

Im thinking of increasing the rasbora school, adding a school of possibly (ember, ruby, or serpae) tetra, maybe some velvet swordtails, a few angel fish (one or two black and one or two mostly orange w/ some black), ottos or hillstream loaches, maybe a mystery snail or two, maybe some shrimp, maybe kuhli loaches? That's kind of where I'm at right now in terms of ideas.

My mom would like them to 'match' the rasboras, hence why alot of them have orange/black, and my dad likes bright fish. We went to petsmart and he pointed out the blacklight neon selection and the Dalmatian mollies. I told him no to the black light fish and my mom said no to the mollies. Im thinking the hillstream loach or synodontis catfish could emulate that dalmatian pattern and make him happy.

if anyone knows good places to shop in either Las Vegas/Henderson area or good online sources for live fish that would also be great. Thanks so much!

 

[Andy Sager]

For starters, if you research all the fish species you've mentioned, you'll find that they all do not like the same water conditions so you really need to narrow your choices and decide which fish are the most important to keep then choose fish that do well under that/ those fish's parameters.
Unless you have some good experience with water maintenance, it's always easiest if you get fish that do well in the water parameters of your local water so you don't have to constantly be changing or altering the water to make it proper for fish that do not do well under your parameters. So the first step should really be to find out what your tap water's parameters are. Determine Ph, General Hardness, KH/Carbonate Hardness and nitrate levels out the tap. You can also find out if your local water uses Chlorine or Chloramine in their system by going to their website or by calling them. If your water if from a well, you will have to rely on doing your own testing or have a local shop do a full panel test. If you do your own, be aware that the water sample should sit overnight before testing the Ph as the Ph can change from " gassing off."

Start with that and we can go from there.
Hope this helps.