Hi there, Newbie here with daft questions.

[RIngrey]

Hi, I have been keeping fish for the past 12 months since purchasing a small tank for my daughter. As is the case for most things children soon lose interest in such things and as a result I have taken over the mantle of household fish keeper.
I’m not going to lie I love looking after these little creatures and having done so for a sustained period of time I decided to buy a larger tank. I’m now the proud owner of a 180L tank.
I’ve cycled the tank using the media from the smaller tank, with the added help from Seachem stability I’ve successfully completed my new tank nitrogen cycle with the help from a few platy’s.
The tank is now 10 weeks old. I’ve a sand substrate with 10 cryptocorynes and 7 vallisneria plants flourishing. I have a nice rock formation, a downed Thunderbolt WWII aircraft and a piece of wood to finish off the landscape.
So far over the course of the past 10 weeks I have added a total of 5 Platy’s, 5 Neon Tetras, 2 Amano Shrimp, 3 Longfin Bronze Corys and a golden nugget pleco. I test my water perimeters everyday and all values are perfect (ammonia 0ppm, Nitrite 0ppm and Nitrate varies 0-25ppm) and carry out a 10% water change twice a week.
I have a total of 16 fish in the tank. Is there scope to adding anymore fish? I’d say that discounting substrate, plants and decoration I have Cora 160L of water in the tank.

 

[Archerfish]

Welcome to the forum! Your tanks sounds very nice. If it were me, I would wait a few months. I keep heavily planted tanks with a low bioload. But if you want to add more fish, neon tetras will be a good bet. Not sure about the compatibility of your Corys and the plec. One of the other members might provide more insight into that aspect.

 

[Fishmanic]

Cories and Pleco should get along fine. But we need to know what the hardness of your water is. You can get the number from your water supplier by calling them or looking up their site. Platys are hard water fish, Neon tetra are soft water fish so advising which to add more of would depend on your water hardness.

Also, be aware that Platys are livebearers and you could end up with many many fry if they breed, which most likely they will do.

 

[RIngrey]

Here is my water hardness provided by my water supplier....

Slightly Hard
Hardness Clark 8.54

 

[Slaphppy7]

Welcome to TFF

I got into the hobby in a very similar way that you did, thanks to my daughter

 

[ClownLurch]

I believe Corys require a bit more company of their own kind. Seriouslyfish.com is the science backed website most often referenced to on here. They’ll keep you right.

 

[GaryE]

If you add say six more Corys of the same species you'll see a positive change in how sociable they are. Longfins are a human selected trait, but the fish don't care. Regular Cory aeneus bronzes would also be good. With 3, they tend to be wary and suspicious ("What ate all my possible companions?) but at 6 to 10 or more, they are happy, goofy little fish. Your tank could easily support that.

 

[RIngrey]

Would it support 3 more Cory’s and another 5 Neons?

 

[GaryE]

I would consider that reasonably safe stocking.

 

[RIngrey]

I would consider that reasonably safe stocking.

That will give me a total of 25 fish.

 

[Essjay]

Hardness Clark 8.54

There are half a dozen unites for hardness and fish keeping uses just two of them, dH and ppm.

8.5 degrees Clark converts to 6.8 dH and 120 ppm. Fish profiles will use one or other of those units.

UK water water companies always make it sound harder than we as fish keepers would say and you have soft water. I'm afraid the platies won't do well long term, but the rest of your fish are fine. May I suggest that you don't replace the platies when the time comes, but chose another soft water species instead.

 

[Byron]

There is plenty of room for more fish if selected carefully (different species) but primarily the cories and tetras need larger groups. In this tank a group of 12-15 cories (or more). And similar number for the neon tetra. The improved well-being and health of these two fish species will be considerably increased with these numbers as absolute minimum.

There is no issue with GH, but the numbers are a serious problem for these two fishes.

Edit. Re-reading my post, to avoid any confusion by "numbers" in the last sentence I mean the number of the tetra species and the number of the cories, these are serious issues for the respective species. Not GH numbers being a problem, they are not.

 

[RIngrey]

Thanks for the informative advice. Plenty to learn in this hobby.
Will having 12 Cory’s leave enough space for the Gold Nugget Pleco?

 

[RIngrey]

I'm going to donate my Platy's back to my local pet store.

What other tank mates could I consider adding to my communal aquarium?
Current stock:

5 Neons (Will increase to 10)
3 Bronze Cory's (Will increase to 9)
1 Betta
1 Gold Nugget Pleco

I'm looking for some largish fish with presence.... Angelfish maybe???

Purely looking to do some research at the minute so your thoughts would be welcome.

Thanks

 

[Essjay]

I would say no to the betta. They are not community and are best kept on their own. The neons might well nip a betta's fins as those long fins are like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
A trio of honey gouramis would work though, 1 male 2 female. Avoid the red ones as they may be labelled as honey gouramis but many are actually the larger thick lipped gourami. And avoid dwarf gouramis in all the colour forms as many are infected with an incurable disease by the time they get to the shop. Pearl gouramis would also work in a tank this size.