What Are My Options?

[guidedbyechoes]

First of all hi and thanks for reading this post. I'm planning on stocking my 30 gallon. I'm not new to this I have a 55 gal that I have set up for about 2 years. More tanks before it. In that tank are mbuna and I bought quite a few plants to put in there java fern, needles fern, anubis, some apongeans (sp) and a couple other species that slips my mind.

Any way my ph is around 8 and I wanted somewhere between 2-10 colorful fish. They don't have to be aggresive but I don't want them to barely move either. I have the means to overfilter but I wanted to stock it lightly so it would be more natural looking.

 

[drobbyb]

Have you ever thought about having rainbows? Once mature, they are quite beautiful. They can be acclimated to hard water via a drip acclimation. A 30 gallon tank is the minimum size for some of the larger bows. The blue-eyes stay small but you could fit in quite a bit more than their larger cousins.

 

[guidedbyechoes]

Have you ever thought about having rainbows? Once mature, they are quite beautiful. They can be acclimated to hard water via a drip acclimation. A 30 gallon tank is the minimum size for some of the larger bows. The blue-eyes stay small but you could fit in quite a bit more than their larger cousins.

I do like the bosemens. If I got those I could also keep some of the less delicate shrimps with them since they wouldn't get chomped.

 

[drobbyb]

Some of the larger shrimps would be fine. I tried cherry shrimp with mine, but they were just a tasty snack for the bows.

 

[guidedbyechoes]

Some of the larger shrimps would be fine. I tried cherry shrimp with mine, but they were just a tasty snack for the bows.

luckily most of the larger shrimp are also of the hardwater tolerant variety.

 

[guidedbyechoes]

I went to two LFS today. The bosami were 7-9 dollars each so I think I'll skip them. Things that caught my attention: Pearl gouramis, Kribensis, and white cloud mountain minnows. Now about the white clouds the prices at the two stores were outragiously dissimilar. One place had 5 for $10 and the other place they were 3/$24. Same type also.

 

[Wills]

How about a big shell dweller community? You just need to start out with a few fish and the population will build gradually over time, you could even sell the babies to help with tank costs. They thrive in hard water and there are a lot of beautiful varieties you could get an awesome population going in a 30g
Wills

 

[guidedbyechoes]

How about a big shell dweller community? You just need to start out with a few fish and the population will build gradually over time, you could even sell the babies to help with tank costs. They thrive in hard water and there are a lot of beautiful varieties you could get an awesome population going in a 30g
Wills

Are there any that a re diamorphic? It says not to mix shelldwellers and thats a huge area for 6 2" fish.

 

[Wills]

Not so far as I know I looked into a small group in a 10g and most people advised 1 male and 3 female in that small tank, how ever my research stopped after a while and I decided against a second tank. Maybe head over to the african section for someone with more info. Even if you do end up starting with just a few fish your population will boom eventually and the fry growing are fantastic
Wills