Silver Dollars In A 50 Gal? And Are They Bullys?

[three-fingers]

Well its going to be ages until i can get my 50gal(or more) aquarium, so it looks as if I'm going to have to re-home some fish.
This now means that when i do get the bigger tank, i will be able to have more fish in it and i've always liked silver dollars, i've just never had the space.
So i have some questions about them .
Would i be able to keep enough of them in a 50gal(do they need to shoal)?
Would they eat amano shrimp or the like?
Would they bully small fish? I have some tetras and white clouds in my tank right now that would be going in the 50gal and i don't want them to be bullied.
And is there any smaller metynnis species that are seen around sometimes?
Thanks .

 

[severum boy]

Hi, You could get a shoal of Metynnis in a 50gal, probably about 6 individuals so yes, they need to shoal. I have never heard of anyone keeping them with Amano shrimp, but I ouwld advise caution. Metynnis are omnivorus with herbivorus tendecies, but thoes powerful jaws and crushing teeth would make short work of shrimp, so i would advice no. They wont bully other fish, but may well out compete them at feeding time so feed some sinking pellets at one end of the tank and sink some flake at the other. The tetras should learn that it is eaisier to get the flake, so will cluster around that end of the tank at feeding time. As for smaller species, they all grow roughly the same size, but Metynnis hypsauchen fasciatus (the striped metynnis) and M. lippincottianus (the small spotted metynnis) grow a bit smaller than normal Metynnis argenteus, but these are much rarer, not to mention more expensive. Hope this helps.

 

[three-fingers]

Bummer...i didn't want them to eat the shrimp. Ah well, i'll just provide tonnes of hiding places. The tank is going to be well planted with fast growing plants and non-tasty plants, so they should be well hidden.
Thanks for the help, i'll look into those species .

 

[pacuboy]

It all depends on which silverdollars you want to get?? If you go with the spotted silverdollars you can make a nice shoal of about 6 because spotted silverdollars get to about 5 inches. I have Metyins .A (spotted silverdollar) which I got yesterday I say there great.

 

[severum boy]

Enshure you take really good care with the plants, the only plants i know (with my limited experiance of plants and dollars) that will withstand dolars are java moss and java fern. This may be because java moss grows quite fast and repairs itself and the java fern tastes horrid. A thick bunch of java moss would actually be a good idea for the shrimps as well.....

 

[three-fingers]

My current tank is filled with java fern so thats great . Java moss always seemed to die on me though....
I'll work something out. It will be ages from now and i might of even changed my mind by that time, so i'll cross that bridge when i come to it .
Thanks for the help guys .

 

[~T~]

My dollars ate java fern and even ate a fake plant(the little fern kind that come in different colours).