help me set up a community!

[chazzi13]

I am about to upgrade from a 20 litre tank to a 200 litre tank. I have done alot of reaserch on the types of fish that are compatible as tank mates but the decision of what to get is so hard! Can anyone tell me what fish they keep together that seem to work or give me a rough idea on what species would work as a nice little community? PLEASE!!!

[chazzi13]

By the way, I forgot to mention that in my 20 litre tank I have
4 neon tetras
1 dwarf gourami
1 cory catfish
1 khuli loach
1 snail
which will be going into the 200 litre tank

[COBettaCouple]

welcome to fishlore!

right now, we just have bettas and platys, but you might want to get 2 more neon tetras since they do better with other fish when they're in a group of 6 or more. At least one more Cory cat would be good, they like company of their own kind, usually 2-3 at least.

[sirdarksol]

I agree with BettaCouple, especially on the cory. I had a perfectly healthy cory that should have had no reason to die. It had few or no signs of any particular illness, and didn't respond to meds. After talking with people here, I'm pretty sure that the poor guy was stressed from loneliness.
And with the neons, there's nothing cooler than seeing a cloud of neons swimming around the tank in a school.

I am going to make my generic plug for otocinclus catfish, as they're good for keeping the walls of your tank clean (although, with a tank as large as yours, you could probably get a pleco, maybe one of the breeds that only grows to a moderate size). Also, maybe another dwarf gourami or two just to round out the larger fish in the tank.
One note: My brain isn't working mathematically right now, and converting liters to gallons and then figuring out the "inch per gallon" guideline is beyond me at this point, so following all of my suggestions may overload your tank.

Oh, yeah, and welcome to the forums.

[jsalemi]

1 liter = approx. 1 quart, so a 20 liter is a 5 gallon tank, which sounds seriously overcrowded with that number of fish. The 200 liter would be 50 gallons, so the existing fish and the new ones you suggested would probably be ok.

[Bryn]

alright to have any great community tank setup u might want.

1 bottom feeders

2 top feeders

3 mid range feeders

find out what type your fish already are most i think most of them will be mid and then add some of the other types that you dont already have which will get along well with ur current fish then my friend will you have a great community tank. along with live plants you'll be set.

Cheers

[sirdarksol]

Well, we've got the cory and the loach, which are both (ostensibly) bottom feeders.
We've got the neon tetras, which are mid-range to bottom feeders.
We've got the dwarf gourami, which stays near the top.
Add at least one cory (because they like company)
Add at least two tetras (to give them a school),
and add a dwarf gourami to round things out, and you've got pretty much what you suggested, plus some.

This is, of course, only a suggestion, and there are plenty of other ways to set the tank up.