Feedback on my stocking ideas please!

[Eli]

Hi everyone,

I was just wondering if anyone could let me know if this stocking would work for my tank?

The tank is a bit over 120 liters if I've worked it out right - 30" x 15" x 18". I have a 150 watt heater which is currently heating to 26 degrees Celsius (not sure what that is in Fahrenheit sorry!) I have a fluval 3 plus filter, and an air stone. I have black sand on the bottom, and driftwood and silk plants for decoration. I was trying to go for a sort of South American theme without using live plants, which I'm not too confident about yet.

At the moment I have 5 bleeding heart tetras and 1 angelfish, so everything will have to work around these.

I love hatchet fish, they are so unusual looking and interesting so I'd really like some of those if possible. I would also like some sort of cory, and I especially like the look of the black and white ones such as panda, skunk or adolfoi. As everything else is pretty plain coloured, I was thinking of some rams to add a bit of colour to my collection.

All suggestions/criticism welcome, If you could let me know what you think I would really appreciate it!

 

[Aquastrategist]

For your final stock, you could increase your tetras to 8, get 6 panda cories ( or any other cory really), and a school of 6 marble hachetfish. I would either keep the one angel and 2 Bolivian rams, or 3 Angels. However, adding more angels or rams is really pushing it.If you get rams, I would go with bolivian rams. They are much more hardy then blue rams.

 

[Aquastrategist]

Of course, add these fish over many weeks and keep in mind how full your tank looks. Good luck!

 

[Eli]

Thanks for your reply

Is 2 an okay number of rams? The reason I say is because I think I read somewhere that with certain fish you either need 1 or 3+ supposedly because it stops the submissive one getting picked on so much? I can't exactly remember where I heard this and in what context but I guess it doesn't apply to rams then? Do you know if there is anything in particular I should look out for when selecting the pair? (eg can you keep two males together? Do they need to be a breeding pair even though I'm not really interested in breeding them?)

I'm also interested in hearing if you have got any other alternative suggestions that maybe I didn't think of?

 

[Aquastrategist]

Either a single male or 2 females. A pair my become aggressive to all other fish in the tank, and two males will fight each other. I would add a single male as females are less colorful and maybe another angel or two.

 

[Eli]

Thanks for your help so far Aquastrategist, how about if I would forget about the rams, is there anything else apart from angels (which I'm not too keen on) that I could have to add a bit of colour? I would have thought about getting neon tetra but don't the angelfish eat them?

 

[Aquastrategist]

A very large angel might, but I havent seen it happen. You could get cardinal tetras, the exact same thing but with a full red stripe and an inch bigger.

 

[librarygirl]

You could do one ram; I have one and she's fine alone. If you get two of the same gender they'll likely fight for territory. If you get a male/female, one might kill the other if they don't pair up. If they do pair up and breed they can become aggressive to other fish, particularly those that also inhabit the bottom like corys.

So you could do:
8 bleeding hearts
1 angel
6 hatchets
1 ram
6 corys

 

[Eli]

Do I need to get 8 bleeding heart tetras? I mean is that a kind of minimum amount, or could I substitute them for more of something else?