Maybe A Lil Help?

[IamGibby]

Hi everyone, My name is Chris, and i live with my girlfriend named Amanda. We both love fish very much, but only recently could get a tank. So we decided to start out small, and if it worked out, we will go to a 100 gal tank. So i have a few questions. We have a 15 gal tank, With Light, filter, air pump, everything you need. So the main question would be, what fish do you recommend for a 15gal tank? The people at the lfs, aren't any help, they all just want to sell us as many fish as possible. So we wanna know which/how many fish are good for a 15 gal tank, including atleast Oscars (gf) and RopeFish (me). Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time,

Chris and Amanda

 

[WILDER]

The rope fish and oscars are out of the question for a 15 gallon tank.
Tetra's, harlequins, corys, livebearers, gouramis, no angels the tanks to small.

 

[Captain Retardo]

Yea, sorry to say but ropefish and oscars will grow way to big for a 15 gallon aquarium, but if you get the 100 gallon then we can start talking!

 

[Rhiannon]

HI Chris and Amanda

I have the same size tank, and I have 3 guppies, 1 blue ram, some neons, 2 cory cats and a bristlenose.

Best fish for these 2ft tanks are probably the live bearers or the blue rams.

Corys will be fine too, and some sort of algae eater, but definitly not the ones you see at the LFS called "sucker catfish" they grow to big and are nasty pasties.

 

[celaeno]

hello chris. you are looking at fish with a mature length no larger than 3".

 

[IamGibby]

Minimum Tank size for 2 Oscars and 2 RopeFish?

 

[WILDER]

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=47035

 

[fishlette]

generally the rule is one inch per gallon. when thinking about the fish you want in there you have to take into account their adult size in inches. so if you were thinking of mollies who average around 3" you would go about 4 of those (making room for the fact that some of them grow a little larger.) platys or guppies are smaller so you go a lot more of these. also think that if you are going to move them into a bigger tank when you get it, your fish will have to get along with the new, larger looking fish you want in there. unless of course you are going to keep this current tank seperate. another idea for your tank would be a school of glowlight tetras or neon tetras. these guys are reasonably hardy but if you havent already cycled your tank i would suggest the livebearers as they are more hardy than the tetras in my opinion

good luck with it all and welcome to the fishy world

 

[rdd1952]

Here is a pretty good pinned thread that lists acceptable fish for a 10 gallon tank. It would also apply to your 15 gallon. As already mentioned, you need small fish and the !' per gallon rule, means you could propaably have about 6 or 7 of those species.

 

[IamGibby]

Ok i know i need to let this die and all, but 1 last question.

Well the reason is, i currently live on a second floor and they arent allowing us to have a bigger tank (weight reasons).

Now, if i have a 15 gal tank, couldnt i get 2 Oscars that are apporximately 1in to 1.5inch and 2 4-5inch Rope fish, and they be good for like, 3-4 months? We are 120% sure that in 2-4 months, we will be living in our house, which we will be able to have a 1million gal tank (lol) if we were to want to. So once that happens, we are gonna get a 80-100 gal tank, and only want to have 2 maybe a 3rd Oscar, and 2 Rope fish. Nothing else. (Other then Plants, drift wood, etc)

Now is that totally out of the question, or would that be ok for the fish?

and to the cycle question, yes we did a no-fish cycle, all levels are good, everything running great, just dieing to know if we can get our new babies. I mean we could live with out them for the 2-4 months, but we really would enjoy getting them asap to let them grow under our care to get to know how they act, respond and so on so forth. We dont really like many other fish, (other then my dream Fish a LionFish) but my girlfriend wont allow that, she thinks it will flopp out and kill her *she watchs animal planet waaaay too much XD*

well i am very thankful of your guy's curtious and time to respond, You guys are awesome. Thanks for the info.

-Chris

 

[Dorkhedeos]

i would say the rope fish will be good in there for a few months just because people use 10 gallons to grow out their bichirs so they wont get eaten when they are put in with the bigger ones. get a really tight cover or you will have a dried ropefish by the end of the week

 

[Miss Wiggle]

no good for the oscars I'm afraid.

they grow very fast in the first year of they're life, going from an inch or two when they're sold to 10" at a year old, from that point they're growth slows down and they start getting fat.

it is acceptable to start them off in a smaller tank, however it needs to be 30/40g and when they get to 6 months old you'll need to upgrade it to a minimum of 75g tank for 1 oscar.

you can't really keep two oscars together, they're very agressive with they're own kind and as they get to 6 months+ they'll fight, one will inevitably be a little smaller nad wekaer than the other, it will get picked on and basically beaten to death by the larger one. people really just keep 1 oscar, or if you have a very big tank (i.e. 400g+) then you can keep a group of 6 which will spread the aggression out. sometimes you can get a breeding pair, this is highly unlikely but if you get a group of 6 juveniles then as they grow up hope two will pair off, if they do you can re-home the rest and keep those two together. however you may have to go through several groups of juvi's to find a pair and even when you've got one there's no guarantee they won't eventually turn on each other and kill each other.

in all honesty your best bet is to set up a small community tank now, this gives you a good chance to do plenty of research and get the hang of the basics of fishkeeping. you can then plan out what to do when you move and then get a nice big tank when you do.