Hola

[Gone Elvis]

Hi,

Hello just joined, I recently got my first aquarium and thought I would look around for a good forum.

I am after some advice on which fish to go for next?

I have a Jewel Rekord 600, dimensions Size: 60 x 30 x 42cm external, Volume: approx. 63 litres.

Fish I have at the moment are as follows;

6 x Green Tiger Barbs
4 x Five Banded Barbs
2 x Corydoras Julii
1 x Bristlenose Ancistrus

My local aquarium place said I should be looking at around 20 medium sized fish in total, so that would leave space for about 7 more.

I was thinking of getting 2 more corydoras, not sure which to go for?
So which other fish would fit in then?

thanks in advance,

cheers,

Dale

 

[Wills]

Hi 63 liters is about 15 gallons so your actually quite well stocked already, the tiger barbs are quite a big fish for a schooling fish especially as adults they are very chunky.

I would add an other 4 Corydora Julli not an other species of cory as that is not going to work. They need to be in groups of their own species not a mix of other fish. I would also add an other Five Band Barb as well to make the numbers upto 5.

Im a bit stuck as to what to suggest for your center piece as they need to be tough enough to avoid the tiger barbs and they cant have long fins but they cant get too big either. Maybe a few male platties? Dont mix the genders as the tank is not big enough to cope with them breeding and a trio of males will get along just fine

Wills

 

[waterdrop]

Without looking them all up I would have thought this tank was already overstocked Wills, perhaps the barbs grow smaller than I'm thinking (I was thinking they and the cories can all reach about a 2 inch adult size?)

Also, what is our cycling and water testing situation on this tank? Dale, did you go through the weeks/months of fishless cycling to prepare your biofilter prior to getting fish? Often the LFS don't help you understand any of that need.

~~waterdrop~~
ps. Welcome to TFF!

 

[Timmy_Bee]

Tigers def get to 2" - mine are already close and they are less than a year old... Dont have a ny 5 band, but im pretty sure they are the same.
I would agree with WD - this looks pretty well stocked as it is. At least let them grow a bit and see how full it looks.

 

[Gone Elvis]

Hi all,

thanks for the replies,

the barbs and cories grow to about 2", and I think the ancistrus grows to about 3.5"

waterdrop, my local LFS was very helpful, I had the water tested by them regularly over a few weeks (I think it was about 6 or 7), and didn't get any fish untill everything was fine.

I must admit it is quite confusing as to how many fish you can have! My LFS said that for my size of tank I should be looking at around 20 medium size fish, they defined medium size fish as about 2.5", although it also depended upon the type of fish, ie some fish are thin whereas other can be a lot chunkier!

Places like this forum are excellent, with the depth of knowledge that is available .

Maybe best to leave them be for now and see how they look when they are grown up,

cheers,
Dale

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Dale,

Unfortunately, a person who is new to the hobby would be much, much better off having a minimum of 45 US gallons if they wanted to keep 20 fish that will grow to 2.5 inches. Its of course good for business if every customer has bought enough fish to overstock and if the overstocking causes imbalances and deaths then of course that too generates still more sales. I'm not saying that a shop wishes that on you, but its a tough business and to some extent many of them fall in to these sort of business practices.

The other thing we see a lot (we get hundreds of beginners through here) are beginners who are told their water is testing "fine" but who later find they have ammonia or nitrite levels when they get a liquid kit and test themselves. This particular thing varies quite a lot though in different cases and the testing you received may have been fine. Its just important for me to say this because of other beginners reading our posts.

My feeling is that its particularly important for beginners to have a good experience for the first two years at least. This way they have a "baseline" that is good from which to judge things that are different if they attempt some overstocking at a later time when they feel they are ready for the more frequent water changes and other extra maintenance.

~~waterdrop~~