Angelfish tank stock guide

65 gallon tank with 2 aquaclear 75 filters. Ultimate goal is a tank with a few angelfish as the centerpiece. I have done some research on what species are compatible, just wondering which order in which to add them. I decided to keep:

Platies-2 female 1 male
Corys-3
bristle nose pleco-1
A dwarf gourami-1
Swordtails 3 female 1 male
A keyhole cichlid
Kuhli loaches-3
Lemon tetras-6
Rummy nose tetras-7
Guppies-6 male
Mollies-3 female 1 male
Head and tail light tetras-6

I know to hold off until the end on the keyhole, rummy nose, and angels. Which fish do you recommend I start with, and are my ratios of male to female right? Bioload too high? Thanks for advice in advance.

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Swordtails, guppies, platies and mollies are more comfortable in harder water than angels are and they need a higher ph. Angels can tolerate higher levels of hardness and ph but the Corys and tetras would not be happy. My opinion of course but I think you would have more success with 6 corys, your numbers of the tetras and 6-8 hatchets, 4-6 kuhlii loaches and 4 angels. Angels should always be the last fish added. Look at farlowella catfish as well. I have a pair of them and I love them.

How long and wide is a 65gallon tank?
How often do you plan on feeding the fish and doing water changes?
Will the tank be cycled/ established before the fish are added?

How many angelfish did you want? To get a breeding pair you need to buy around 10 young fish and grow them up together, then let them pair off naturally. In a tank that is 6-foot long you can have 2-3 adult pairs of angels, assuming there is lots of plants and wood to break up territories. When the adults have paired off you remove unwanted fish to another tank or sell them.

As stated livebearers need moderately hard, slightly alkaline water so keep your GH around 150ppm and pH around 7.4 if possible.
If you plan on keeping wild caught angelfish then no livebearers should be kept with them and they need soft acidic water.

Platies, keep at least 4 females per male or better still only keep males or females. Male livebearers harass females (and sometimes other fish) and can cause problems. Females on their own are usually happier. Having a group of females with 1 male can spread the harassment around and reduce stress on the girls.

Never put Swordtails with platies because they cross breed. Keep platies or swords but not both. If you choose swordtails keep males or females, or 1 male and lots of females, as mention in platy.

Guppies-6 male, pita and carry lots of diseases. Best left to a species only tank in the kid's room.

No Mollies. Put mollies into another tank if you want them. They NEED hard alkaline water (usually with some salt) otherwise you are wasting your time.
All common livebearers (mollies, swordtails, guppies, platies) are riddled with diseases so quarantine all new fish for a month and treat them all for intestinal worms and gill flukes as soon as you get them.

Corydoras do best in groups of 6 or more. Try to get 10-12 if you can afford it. You can mix different species for more variation, eg: 4 panda cory, 4 peppered, 4 sterbai.

Bristlenose pleco-1 should be fine but you can buy 2 young fish (male & female) and they will usually breed when mature. You can then sell the young.
If you have suckermouth catfish like bristlenose, make sure there is driftwood in the tank at all times.

Don't touch the common dwarf gouramis, they are riddled in disease and just about always cause problems with the crap they bring into tanks.
If you do get dwarf gouramis quarantine them (away from all other fish) for at least 1 month, preferably 2 months before adding to the main tank.

Get a pr of keyhole cichlids. They are fairly peaceful and will breed. Alternatively, 2-3 prs of blue or gold rams, or pr of bolivian butterfly cichlids. Maybe a pr of bolivians and 2 prs or blue rams if you don't want keyholes. You could also look at Apistogramma cacatuoides instead of blue rams.

Kuhli loaches are fine. Get a group so there is more chance of seeing them.

Lemon tetras are fine but get 10 or more for best display.
Rummy nose tetras are fine but 10 or more for best display.
Head and tail light tetras are fine but 10 or more for best display. However, head & tail lights are similar to size and shape to lemon tetras and may not contrast that well. Perhaps get 10 black phantom tetras instead.

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Bioload is all about the food you put in vs the water changes and gravel cleans. The more fish and food going into the tank, the more water changes you do to compensate for the waste produced.

If the tank is 6ft long (not sure about tanks sold as gallons) and has established filters, you could have 2prs of adult angelfish, 2pr of dwarf cichlids (keyholes & bolivians), 30-40 small tetras (rummynose, lemon, h&t lights), 6 khulis, 1pr of b/nose catfish, 10 cories, 6-10 platies or swordtails or another fish similar in size to them.

If the tank is 4ft long then 1pr of adult angels, 1pr of keyholes (or 2 prs of the other dwarfs mentioned), 30-40 small tetras, 6 khulis, 1 pr b/nose, 10 cories, 6-10 platies/swords.

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If the tank has established filters, you can add platies & tetras first, wait a few weeks then add small angelfish, dwarf cichlids & b/nose. Then a few weeks later add cories & loaches.
Get young fish and let them grow up together.
Make sure the fish are bagged separately when you buy them. eg: Don't let the shop put angels and catfish together, and don't let them put all the dwarf cichlids together unless they are young fish.
Bag mature/ adult angels individually, young angels can be put in 1 bag. Tetras can go together. Livebearers can go together in their own bag. Young dwarf cichlids together in 1 bag, but mature dwarfs 1 pr per bag. B/nose in their own bag. Corydoras in their own bag. Khulis in their own bag.

Stanleo, I have well water so it's naturally hard. Those farlowella cats do look interesting, will look into getting one.

Colin-t, tank dimensions are 18.4 in L x 36.4 in W x 25 in H. It's more of a tall than a long, which is why I thought angels might work well being a mid to upper level fish. The ultimate goal was 4 angelfish. Feeding will be once a day, water changes once a week. Going to look for 10 female platies. Might be a tough find at the local know nothing pet stores, fortunately I have am not far from gerbers aquatics, hope they can help out. Swordtails, mollies, guppies and gouramies are off the list. I really like that suggestion on the corys and will go that route. I do have driftwood in my tank. I was thinking of stanleo's suggestion for the farlowella, might try the cat and the pleco. Definitely want the keyholes. I am a big south and central American cichlid fan, just don't have the space for a big enough tank at the moment. I will go with the lemon, rummy nose, and black phantom tetras. These small fish are all new to me, I was one of those monster fish guys for awhile. Going to add fish very slowly, each group at a time, waiting a few weeks between each group. Looks like the hunt for platies starts Monday.

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In a 3ft tank that is tall, you only want 1 pr of adult angelfish. Buy a group of 6-10 little ones and let them grow up and pr off. When you have a nice pr, monitor the others and remove them if they get bullied by the dominant pr.

Due to the smaller surface area of this tank I would get 6 female platies and this will allow some room for the babies they produce. Babies might get eaten by the angels.

1 pr of keyhole cichlids and no other bottom dwelling cichlids.

10 cories.

6 khulis

30 tetras (3 lots of 10).

Bristlenose or twigs, but probably not both.

Use a separate container/ tank to quarantine all new fish you get for at least 2 weeks, before adding them to the display tank. 40litre (10gallon) plastic storage containers with lids can be used for quarantining new fish.

Agree on bigger shoals of tetra. I had 6 each of 4 species in a 55G and consolidated into 15 each of only 2 species. I am really pleased with how much better it looks and the natural behaviour. I also chose 2 species that will shoal together (cardinals and glowlights in my case).

Angelfish + Guppies = No Guppies. Just saying.

Colin,

How hard is your well water?

Depending on that, the angels may not be suitable, sadly.
There are ways to soften water a bit but they are challenging. Anytime you are messing with water chemistry, the degree of difficulty increases dramatically.

I generally agree with much of what has been stated in this thread. Only point out a couple of serious issues.

First, this tank is not large enough for more than one species of cichlid.

Second, angelfish are not suited, except in a breeding pair. Colin mentioned this, I will just explain further. Angelfish are shoaling fish, meaning they live in smallish groups (smallish compared to characins and such that live in groups of hundreds if not thousands). When a group of angelfish is put in any aquarium, there must be at least five; they will quickly establish an hierarchy. Sometimes a bully may emerge, sometimes not. But a pair will likely form, then you need to separate them or there will soon be highly stressed and then dead angelfish. Pairs must select each other, what we term bonding; any male and female put together usually will not work, one will be dead before many months. You could have a bonded pair in this tank, but not with most of the other fish mentioned. Corydoras are fine (usually). Upper fish have to be carefully selected to avoid active swimmers, nippers, and small fish the angelfish may decide to eat.

Third...until we know the water parameters of your source water, namely GH (general or total hardness), KH (carbonate hardness or Alkalinity) and pH, suggesting suitable fish is "hit and miss." This is for the source (tap) water, you should be able to get this data from your municipal water authority if you are using city water (as opposed to a private well), check their website.

Some of the fish being suggested will not work together aside from parameters.

I'm going to have to somewhat disagree with some of what's been posted.
I realize that it is generally held that certain fish require very specific water chemistries with respect to hardness and pH. I believe that to a point, this is another myth that just keeps getting passed around by well meaning hobbyists.
Although it may be true for some imports, many of the fish we see in the hobby are pond or tank bred and raised in in a very wide variety of water chemistries.
I predominantly had live-bearers (molly's and swordtails) along with a couple of Cory's in my 60g. I have a pH of 7.6 and although my water is neither soft nor hard, I add Seachem Equilibrium with each water change for increased calcium.
A favorite LFS was going out of business (owner retirement) so he was having a sale. My daughter brought home a couple of nice looking Angel fish (I believe they are both males). I've since added a dozen large neon tetras. Now the Angel's have little sparing contests, but basically ALL of these fish are doing just fine. The live-bearers drop fry like crazy and fish grow and all seem very healthy. I'm spot on with tank/filter maintenance and water quality and feed high quality food. so....it's working for me.

Mike, you are not really disagreeing with the rest of us, but I would point out that "adaptability" is not as broad as some would want us to believe. In the original post we had fish mentioned with very different requirements respecting parameters, and until we know the parameters, we can't really suggest this or that.

If for example the GH ends up being say moderate, a subjective term of course, so around 9 or 10 dGH, that is too soft for mollies. But should be OK for angelfish. At the other end, if the GH turns out to be fairly hard (another subjective term), say 17-18 dGH, Farlowella (which were mentioned along the way) will not live long, or well.

Until we have numbers to pin down the parameters, we can only deal in generalities, not specifics.

A comment on adaptability to different environmental conditions. We are witnessing the extinction of a huge number of species every year*, primarily due to the changes we are causing in the environment/atmosphere. Now this change has been gradual, in geological terms, but it is very significant to species that are evolved over thousands of years to function in a very specific environment, and all freshwater fish species that we maintain in our tanks are subject to this scientific fact. They simply do not function well outside the environment for which they have evolved. Now within these species there are those that can adapt better, and those that cannot adapt at all, and what they are being forced to adapt to also factors in. We cannot think that this does not matter, it does. Only last year I learned that a species of coral had died out, solely due to the ocean water temperature rising 1 degree Celsius.

* identifying exact numbers/species is difficult, because there are thousands of species not yet discovered and described, and many of these may become extinct before we even know they exist. Rough estimate is that the extinction rate is now the sixth major one for the planet, and is somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times as rapid as the natural rate of extinction. [Natural rate is also called background extinction rate and means the species extinction rate that would occur if there were no humans.] As the number of species is estimated at over 2 million, the present rate would mean some 200 to 2,000 species presently become extinct every year.

@Byron - I often hear how Angels absolutely must be in soft, acidic water. It is repeated over and over (like the 4x to 10x gph filter rule, or the over-filtration theory). My angels are nearly the size of your hand and they never lived in soft, acidic water in their lifetime and perhaps even for generations since I don't believe they were wild caught. I'm thinking it might even harm them if I was to put them in soft, acidic water! I'm not looking for a debate here but I might just as easily turn it around to say that Angels (and some other species) in the wild adapted to tolerate soft, acidic water, but there's nothing in their physiology that absolutely requires it. Water purity will always trump hardness/pH factors. I believe my angels will live very well for many, many years in my medium hard, somewhat alkaline water. No, my water is not in the extreme, but it's not soft, acidic either.
I too learned (I think from the BBC Planet Earth series [1 or 2]) that entire coral reefs are dying from a presumed increase in water temperature (although I thought I heard 2 deg C). It seems almost inconceivable that numerous species in a coral reef would be so fragile as to die off from such a slight change in temperature. I have to wonder if other forces are/were also involved?

AbbeysDad said:

@Byron - I often hear how Angels absolutely must be in soft, acidic water. It is repeated over and over (like the 4x to 10x gph filter rule, or the over-filtration theory). My angels are nearly the size of your hand and they never lived in soft, acidic water in their lifetime and perhaps even for generations since I don't believe they were wild caught. I'm thinking it might even harm them if I was to put them in soft, acidic water! I'm not looking for a debate here but I might just as easily turn it around to say that Angels (and some other species) in the wild adapted to tolerate soft, acidic water, but there's nothing in their physiology that absolutely requires it. Water purity will always trump hardness/pH factors. I believe my angels will live very well for many, many years in my medium hard, somewhat alkaline water. No, my water is not in the extreme, but it's not soft, acidic either.
I too learned (I think from the BBC Planet Earth series [1 or 2]) that entire coral reefs are dying from a presumed increase in water temperature (although I thought I heard 2 deg C). It seems almost inconceivable that numerous species in a coral reef would be so fragile as to die off from such a slight change in temperature. I have to wonder if other forces are/were also involved?

Click to expand...

I didn't say this about angelfish.

Byron said:

I didn't say this about angelfish.

Click to expand...

Others did and often do. I see it repeated all the time and I think it is often a robotic like response to the tale being told over and over so (in time) it must be true.

@AbbeysDad I agree on the adaptability. I live in a hard water area (GH=16 degrees German) and have a thriving S. American community tank. But all the fish in it are locally bred. I personally wouldn't have Angels because my only attempt at introducing them in a community tank (5 in 350 litres) did end up as a winner takes all with a sole survivor. Interestingly my LFS keeps both "hard water" and "soft water" versions of several of the most popular species.

As for the reefs, I too don't believe that temperature is the sole cause. But as an avid scuba diver I can confirm that the devastation is real, and returning to a reef you last visited as recently as 10 years ago is a truly shocking experience.