65 Gallon tall stocking help!!

[anewbie]

Yeah skip mollies. They need a GH over 250ppm.

Okay so you like color, that's a place to start.

If you mix a little bit of RO water to lower your GH to below 140ppm, you can consider a couple nannacara anomala.

Nannacara anomala (Golden Dwarf Cichlid) — Seriously Fish

www.seriouslyfish.com

The males show really nice coloring and they're not a large size thatd be a problem, and you could keep them with tetras up top level.


Another option is laetacara curviceps, you won't have to change your parameters for it, but it may be a little harder to find compared to the species above. But it's a better fit for your water parameters, and again can be kept with tetras up top.

Laetacara curviceps – Dwarf Flag Cichlid (Acara curviceps, Aequidens curviceps) — Seriously Fish

www.seriouslyfish.com

Just to throw a couple more suggestions out there for you

DO NOT get laetacara cuviceps; the species you want is laetacara dorsigera or laetacara araguaiae; NOW here is where it gets tricky frequently domestic laetacara curviceps are really laetacara dorsigera. here is a picture of some laetaara dorsigera sold as curviceps. I find the dorsigera a bit more passive than araguaiae but you could keep 2 pairs of araguaiae in a 40b. i have 6 in my 180 and they frequently breed without too much disruption. Mine were sold as wild caught. My 4 dorsigera are in a 500 so i can't really make any comparative comment given the tank size but they are very passive for dwarf cichild.

---
As for nannacara anomala; there appears to be two forms. One is more blue and the other more green. To make things worse there are two sizes one tends to stay around 2 to 2 1/2 inch and another is closer to 4 inches. I've done some searching on this topic and found references but it is not well understood by myself. I had some hobby raised ones that were green and the larger form and found them much more enjoyable than the smaller ones. Anyway do some searching there might be more information out there but i'm pretty sure they are considered the same species but in two different catch locations. I can't tell you which form is typical for domestic. The females can be super aggressive when they have fry so be aware of that. Of course the fish i like right now are these:

 

[GaryE]

Some are hybrids of Latin and Greek, as in Nannostomus. Nanno, from the Greek, 'nano' = small, and 'stomus' from the Latin= mouth. See? We've already learned something about the fish.

"I'm going to get a smallmouth to go with my cardinals" might not mean the same thing for many people as "I'm going to get a Nannostomus to go with my cardinals".

Having kept fish in a French language culture for 50 plus years, I found most fish people used Latin names for fish. I've noticed that with other cultures too. Only English seems to have a serious problem with scientific names. It's an odd aspect of our culture.