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Are the Kribs definitely a male and a female? Everyone has given great advice so far. And if you want to keep the Kribs it limits your choices a lot. Nothing near the bottom (except Venezuelan Corys, get another half a dozen), and no other cichlids. You could swap the Kribs out for an Angel if...

I hadn’t heard of them either. Beautiful fish. One for emeraldking I think.

Bolivian Rams are very peaceful.

Could you not get a second hand tank locally - one that you can see full of water before you buy it? I don’t want to recommend buying a used tank unseen and getting it shipped. That’s always a risk.

That’s a nice sized tank for Gouramies. Half a dozen or so Honeys or Pearls would like it in there. They’ll be at the top so the Bolivians won’t bother them.

This... We all made mistakes in the beginning, and we all had bad advice. And it’s a huge learning curve. A lot of people ignore advice and the needs of the fish. You’re obviously not one of them. My best advice is to get the biggest tank you can. Even a second hand one. I wouldn’t even keep...

I don’t see you like that. You’ve explained your position, and getting into a bad situation because of bad advice is all too common in this hobby. Just increase the groups when you can. :)

Just to add, for clarity.... species from lineage 1 (not commonly available) and lineage 3 (now in the genus Scleromystax) do not live in groups as the males are actually extremely territorial. These species should be kept in pairs. All other Corys live in groups.

I’d use a slightly altered “Sucking Loach”. ;)

P. amates was the original Merry Widow. This from Wiki... “...the common name for the species, merry widow, was invented by William T. Innes's friend and fishkeeping author Frederick H. Stoye due to the fish's "lively habits, plus the mourning [black] edge on the dorsal fin". German-born Stoye...

I have always thought that.

What dechlorinator are you using? There may still be some that don’t do chloramine? Chloramine breaks down gradually into ammonia (which the filter would remove) and chlorine.

Make sure you soak them first to reabsorb water.

Once you get them past a week or three (ie they came in healthy) I would expect that for any number that’s enough to not cause stress. I wouldn’t keep fewer than about 10-12, personally.

Wow, your fish are expensive. Assuming they come from SE Asia, they should cost less to get to you than to get to Britain.

Normal for me (seriously) would be zero deaths for a few years till they started to die of old age.

Yet Seriously Fish says this... “Though not gregarious in the sense of schooling or shoaling fishes it does seem to do best in the presence of conspecifics and provided plenty of cover is available any aggression should be minimal.” I don’t know much about Schistura. Never kept them. I wonder...

Us British folks don’t know how to pronounce it. When I started secondary school there were two classes for each year (small school). My class (1A) learned the hard (German) pronunciation, and the other class (1B) learned it the soft (french) way.

Odessa Barb, Pethia padamya. Padamya is Burmese for ‘Ruby’. Called Odessa Barb because that’s where it first appeared in the hobby. So go and discover a fish and bring it home and you can name it after your home town. Go figure.

Yet the English language is derived mainly from Latin and “Ancient” Greek... as are the “Latin” names.

Looks like a Schistura Loach. Closest I can find is S. corica.

That’s a local name. Every fish (most of them) has local names. We’ve adopted a handful of them. There’s no consistency in naming fish. That’s half the issue.

Labeos... sharks because they have a triangular dorsal fin? Pretty sure I can find another few thousand fish with a triangular dorsal fin. Odessa Barbs... similar silliness to ‘German’ Blue Rams. Chinese Algae Eaters... they are found in China but historically they haven’t come from there. They...

Pleco. No offence intended, but in the UK we always called them plecs. So why take a perfectly good abbreviation and then add another syllable to it. Seems silly to my inherent succinctness. :)

Sounds like me.

Why can’t you just lift it out complete with roots? Should be easy in 2” of gravel(?). You’ll be left with mucky water but that’s only temporary and the fish won’t mind. Amazon roots are like houseplant roots, enough to fill a large plant pot. Best Amazons I’ve ever seen were in 6” of fine...

To be fair a tank that can remove any amount of ammonia to double zeros in a day is cycled. 3ppm is far more than a tank full of fish will produce, so 1ppm is enough in most cases. :)

I’ve looked in the past (and just now) but can’t find any. They were very common for a while so a lot of those Rams with XL black spots, or double black spots, and a lot of black in the dorsal, are probably descendants of them.

The Rams want it hotter than the others (80+), so they’re not compatible.

Saw a confusing one here yesterday... Glowlight Rasbora. I know that fish as Trigonopoma pauciperforatum, the rasbora that looks like a Glowlight Tetra, but now they’re also calling Trigonostigma hengeli, which looks nothing like the Glowlight Tetra, the Glowlight Rasbora. Anyway, back to the...

Agree with Gary. Stress... wanting out to go and find others of it’s kind. All of your Corys are stressed in those numbers. I would increase them ASAP, partly because these numbers are unethical and partly because stress invites disease. If you’ve no room for more, change them so that they’re...

You mean nitrite. Yes anything above zero is too high for fish. But it should be zero very soon. Have patience.... It’ll be worth it. :)

The big tilapiines write their own rules, like the Central Americans. They’re very intelligent. In a tank, they’ll patiently wait till they’re big enough to kill their cichlid tankmates, then kill them when they know they can.

This isn’t normal. They only do it if the water is bad. It’s a reaction to irritation of the skin.

I don’t think they’re trousers at all. I think they’re plants. ;) I can’t ID them though... Edit... title’s been changed now. It said pants...

Is that 9 square meters or 9x9? A 10 foot by 10 foot tank all to themselves. A lot of much bigger cichlids would be happy with that. Territory size isn’t always related to fish size. Hemichromis (the 5-spot cichlids, aka “pocket battleship”) have been observed defending a 50 yard stretch of...

I’ve no idea. I just looked at FishBase’s list of species in the Philippines, but there are no pictures of them.

Yes it’s a halfbeak. There are three species native to the Philippines, Dermogenys bispina, D. palawanensis (endemic), D. robertsi.

It’s strange. ’Kribs’ are very popular and every aquarist knows of them, yet there are so many sites out there, and people, who say “African cichlids need hard alkaline water”. A whole continent of fish overlooked because of two lakes. Space is very important for cichlids. A question on another...

With 4+ loaches and a small group of small dithers I don’t see much of an issue with feeding. I wouldn’t use Barbs as they will eat from the bottom. If you used a species that lives in the upper levels, such as danios, they’ll get their (sinking) food on the way down and there’ll be plenty on...