Colourful Mid To Top Level Fish

[2excitedkids]

We have had our aquarium since march. (see profile for fish and tank). Over that time we have built up our stock.
We originally chose Denisons Barbs as our specimen fish to add colour but to be honest they have not done well and we have gone from 6 to 3 and probaly soon to be 2.(will be adressing this in emergency section).

Our question is what shall we replace them with. Most of our fish are lower to mid level fish and the tank seems empty. We regularly test water(which is always normal) and do weekly 30% water changes. Our water is alkaline and hard, nitrates from tap15-20. It is a planted tank.

Colour is very important and prefer no aggression.

We wondered about

1. Red rainbow fish
2. Angels-which has nice colour (if any)
3. Rainbow cichlid (like german rams but they prefer soft ,acidic water)

Any other ideas ?

I keep looking at tropical fish finder but unless you know what you are looking for it isn't that helpful.

 

[Bigbadbaz]

I have a shoal of hatchets, the are good top dwellers, I also have a large shoal of buenos ares tetras which are good mid-level fish.

 

[flash22]

hatchets as above. rams are ok in harder water as there mainly bred in europe where theres nothin but hard water but if you want to breed the softer is better

what else do you have in the tank ?? you can get some nicely coloured killfish. Angels are nice loads of varation in them too ended up with 5 for my center piece 2 koi, 1 white with black markings (blusher) and 2 platinium

 

[Bigbadbaz]

I forgot about the angels, I second flash22. A general list of what you have would help the members guide you..

 

[flash22]

had a look in your profile now.

not sure about the angels now due to the pearl gouramis. killies will do well with your mollies and platies. Have a look in the killfish forum (in livebearers)

 

[2excitedkids]

Sorry -was in my profile.
3 denisons barbs,4 albino corys,4 platys.2 pearl gouramis,2 mollies,3 dwarf neon rainbow fish,6 neons.1 snowball and one pitbull plec.
Planted,sand,260litre.
Just had a look at hatchets...mostly silver.I was thinking of brighter colours...yellows,blues,orange,reds etc...

 

[TheChards]

Guppies always add a lot of colour as you can get them in so many different varieties and they seem to spend most of their time chasing each other/ playing around in the current near to the top of the tank (mine do anyway). Obviously they're not good if you were hoping for 1 or 2 larger fish but if you didn't mind getting a school of smaller fish then they might be just right!

 

[watkins101]

I dont know quite how far south in Lincs you are but Maidenheads at Peterborough always seem to have a good selection of Rainbows in and so does the branch at Rutland (although to a lesser degree), I picked up 4 Melanotaenia trifasciata and whilst they are still quite small I asked them to pick out specific fish so they are already colouring up nicely.

 

[OldMan47]

You will want to stay away from rainbow cichlids. They get to be quite large and would be too much for small fish in a community tank. Here are a couple of pictures of mine. They are about 4 inches long in the picture but a bit bigger today.

 

[flash22]

dwarf flag cichlids (curvicepts family) look very much like them. nice and peacefull too. and get on well with most fish inc my angels and gbr's