Hardwater tank stocking ideas

[CR45]

Hello, I'm looking for ideas on what fish would work well in my community fish tank. Its a 71 litre tank. pH around 7.8-8.2, ammonia 0, nitrites 0, nitrates generally between 5-20ppm. The water in my area is quite hard - 16 dH, 269 mg/l CACO3.
At the moment I just have 3 female platys (will add a couple more later) and 2 nerite snails.
What other fish would work well in this tank? I was thinking some guppies and maybe harlequin rasboras and otocinclus but any other ideas?
Thanks

 

[Andy Sager]

Hello, I'm looking for ideas on what fish would work well in my community fish tank. Its a 71 litre tank. pH around 7.8-8.2, ammonia 0, nitrites 0, nitrates generally between 5-20ppm. The water in my area is quite hard - 16 dH, 269 mg/l CACO3.
At the moment I just have 3 female platys (will add a couple more later) and 2 nerite snails.
What other fish would work well in this tank? I was thinking some guppies and maybe harlequin rasboras and otocinclus but any other ideas?
Thanks

The Rasboras and Otos are soft water fish so not a good addition with your hard water. The Guppies, swordtails and non sailfin type mollies will do well in hard water along with the Platies. We'd need the tank dimensions to better suggest other fish species since so many tank shapes now won't support certain fish species even tho the liter amounts will.

 

[CR45]

The Rasboras and Otos are soft water fish so not a good addition with your hard water. The Guppies, swordtails and non sailfin type mollies will do well in hard water along with the Platies. We'd need the tank dimensions to better suggest other fish species since so many tank shapes now won't support certain fish species even tho the liter amounts will.

Thanks for your reply Andy. The tank is 80x30x41.5 cm

 

[Andy Sager]

Thanks for your reply Andy. The tank is 80x30x41.5 cm

Since most are farmed now in harder water, you can try a school of Zebra Danios. If you keep your water a little cooler (21C-24C) which the livebearers would handle as well, white cloud minnows would also go with the other livebearers. If you grow a lot of algae ( Hair algae especially) , Florida Flagfish will help keep it under control. For other livebearers, there are half beaks. There are actually a number of species that will work in hard alkaline water but your tank size limits which ones will do best in your sized tank.

The tank is not all that big so you don't really want to overcrowd the tank so I would try to keep my livebearers as males only as you usually need multiple females per male to help not overwhelm any one female from the male's " intentions". The good news is that except for the Platies, the male guppy, swordtail and many molly species are more colorful so you can still have a nice collection of colors in a smaller tank.

Hope this helps.

 

[Colin_T]

A group of 6-8 Pseudomugil signifer would be alright in that tank. Get the smaller varieties from New South Wales, rather than the bigger varieties from Queensland.

The following link has some info on them.
Pseudomugil signifer

Melanotaeniidae and Pseudomugilidae