suggestions for centerpiece fish for 37 gallon tank suitable for my other fish!

[Navfish]

Im looking for a centerpiece fish that will be peaceful and nonagressive towards my other fish. I have a 37 gallon tank that has sand and some natural river rocks as substrate, spiderwood as decor, and filled with lots of plants.

I have in this tank:
4x serpae tetras
2x black mollies
1x neon tetra (getting 4 more in a bit)
1x nerite snail
There is no aggression in this tank so far!
I would like something colorful and kinda eye-drawing. I was maybe thinking honey gourami? but idk...

the temp I keep the water is 79 degrees
I have decent flow in tank with 2 bubble filter running in the tank so there is plenty of oxygen. Also, the tank is more tall and vertical.

Ill link a pic of what the tank looks like and with all this information being said...what species of fish could be suitable as a showcase in the tank?!

 

[Essjay]

How hard is your water?
You have both hard and soft water species. In soft water, the mollies will be stressed and in hard water the tetras are likely to develop a build up of calcium in their organs. The first thing to do is find the hardness, GH, of your source water. If you are on mains water, your water provider's website should have that info. You need a number and the units of measurement (there are several units they could use)


Rather than a centrepiece you need to think first about increasing the numbers of shoaling fish, assuming you have soft water.
Neons need 10+. Serpae tetras are notorious fin nippers if not kept in a large enough group, so 15+ of them.
A gourami of any sort, with those long dangly fins, would be like a red rag to a bull with serpaes.

 

[Byron]

@Essjay covered it well. The neon tetra need a group of minimum 10, but a few more will be better for their well-being. The serpae...trouble waiting to happen, I would rehome these ASAP. Sedate fish like gourami cannot co-exist with this tetra.

 

[sharkweek178]

79 degrees is too warm for neons. They should be in 77 degrees, maximum.

 

[Navfish]

How hard is your water?
You have both hard and soft water species. In soft water, the mollies will be stressed and in hard water the tetras are likely to develop a build up of calcium in their organs. The first thing to do is find the hardness, GH, of your source water. If you are on mains water, your water provider's website should have that info. You need a number and the units of measurement (there are several units they could use)


Rather than a centrepiece you need to think first about increasing the numbers of shoaling fish, assuming you have soft water.
Neons need 10+. Serpae tetras are notorious fin nippers if not kept in a large enough group, so 15+ of them.
A gourami of any sort, with those long dangly fins, would be like a red rag to a bull with serpaes.

Wow I didn’t know this! I will figure out solution but I’ve had these serpae tetras for more than 8 months but I haven’t experienced them biting or nipping at each other…let alone physically damaging one another.

In addition, when I had an angelfisj they never bothered him

But I will try to figure it out! Thanks for the info

 

[Navfish]

79 degrees is too warm for neons. They should be in 77 degrees, maximum.

Will change to 77 degrees!

 

[GaryE]

So, to the question.
A centrepiece is usually flat sided and slow moving. It's an old fashioned idea, to me, as it rarely works.
Mollies often visit the flanks of slow moving fish, but that isn't a usual worry.
ser[aes have a bad rap, but I like them. In small tanks, they are trouble. But if they haven't been up to now, they are unlikely to change.

The hybrid honey gouramis might work. I used to keep pearl gouramis as centrepieces. There are't many other fish that work. Your tank would be fine at around 74-75f, actually. There's more than one similar species sold as a serpae, but most do fine at 72 plus. Ditto for neons and mollies. But if you add gouramis, they need warmth...

We generally keep tanks too warm, and that shortens lifespans and can speed up some common chronic diseases.

 

[Navfish]

So, to the question.
A centrepiece is usually flat sided and slow moving. It's an old fashioned idea, to me, as it rarely works.
Mollies often visit the flanks of slow moving fish, but that isn't a usual worry.
ser[aes have a bad rap, but I like them. In small tanks, they are trouble. But if they haven't been up to now, they are unlikely to change.

The hybrid honey gouramis might work. I used to keep pearl gouramis as centrepieces. There are't many other fish that work. Your tank would be fine at around 74-75f, actually. There's more than one similar species sold as a serpae, but most do fine at 72 plus. Ditto for neons and mollies. But if you add gouramis, they need warmth...

We generally keep tanks too warm, and that shortens lifespans and can speed up some common chronic diseases.

So would I get only 1 honey gourami?
And also like 8 neon tetras

 

[sharkweek178]

I don't know. The serpais might be well behaved now. But that might change when they see the ventral fins of a gourami.

 

[sharkweek178]

Will change to 77 degrees!

75 would be a good middle range for the species you currently have and would give you a little room for error.

 

[GaryE]

The choice is yours. You need a sedate wide bodied fish with a small mouth.

A honey gourami is a small, gentle fish that hides a lot. A hybrid honey gourami is an aggressive fish. When it comes to English names for fish in stores, there is a devil in the details.

Why not look at what you want to see. Forget a centrepiece. Get fish you like to look at. The centrepiece idea is the old view that neons were too boring to look at unless your eye was drawn to something big. For the bioload of a medium gourami, you could add 10 neons. That shoal will anchor a well set up tank.

 

[Byron]

I don't know. The serpais might be well behaved now. But that might change when they see the ventral fins of a gourami.

This is a very real issue. It is scientific fact that a shoaling fish in groups of three and five is almost guaranteed to be more aggressive than it normally would be in a group of ten. Here we have a naturally aggressive species that has been kept in a group of four. The liklihood of these fish suddenly turning is very real.

Why a fish may not behave according to its natural inherent behaviours is not always easy to ascertain. We know that in the circumstance I just mentioned, the fish in the smaller groups do become more aggressive. Why they have not done so yet, no one knows. Animals are like that, they can be affected by any number of things, resulting in non-normal behaviour. It is always the wisest course to assume the norm for a species, not hope that for some reason it will be abnormal. The temperature range for Hyphessobrycon eques is 22-28C/72-82F, and some sources report less fin nipping issues with temperatures in the lower end of the stated range.

Native to South America, this species is found over a wide geographical area of the Amazon, Parana, Guapore and Paraguay River basins. This citation from my profile may provide some suggestions of all this.

This species is readily discerned from all the other rosy tetra species by the dark colour pattern on the posterior part of the anal fin that expands from the black distal (furtherest from the body) border of this fin. Weitzman & Palmer (1997) note that this dark pattern is somewhat variable on wild-caught specimens from different locations [see below].​

​

Behaviour can be unpredictable; keeping the species in large groups and in larger tanks tends to lessen its aggressiveness. This variant behaviour, like the anal fin pattern mentioned above, may also partly be due to significant variations between the fish. The species has a large geographical distribution including areas of the Amazon, Parana, Guapore and Paraguay River basins. Dr. Stanley Weitzman (1997) has suggested that the "species" may be a complex of closely related species that are geographically quite variable over this wide area of Amazonia; it is quite possible that this "species" may actually be several different species, each endemic to specific river basins, but this will only be ascertained after collections from many locations have been studied in detail.​

​

Most of the fish now available in the hobby are commercially raised and differ from wild-caught fish with respect to the dark shoulder or humeral patch. Commercially bred fish are descended from hybrids (perhaps unintentionally) of fish from different geographical areas, and the patch is shorter or all but absent on most; on wild-caught fish, this patch is black, elongate and slightly triangular. This decades-long inbreeding may also partly explain the fish's aggressive nature.​

 

[Obsessed with fish]

So would I get only 1 honey gourami?
And also like 8 neon tetras

You should get at least two honey gouramis, they are social fish.

 

[Naughts]

I appreciate @Byron's explanation on variants and hybridization of the serpae species.
When I look at the fish in the first to in post #1 I wouldn't recognise them as serpae tetra. Hyphessobrycon, yes. Beyond that, it's confusing but I wouldn't say serpae. Especially since the OP has found them to be peaceful.

 

[Navfish]

I appreciate @Byron's explanation on variants and hybridization of the serpae species.
When I look at the fish in the first to in post #1 I wouldn't recognise them as serpae tetra. Hyphessobrycon, yes. Beyond that, it's confusing but I wouldn't say serpae. Especially since the OP has found them to be peaceful.

Wow okay! Thanks