Lizzie B

Hi everyone!

My poor Oranda finally succumbed to fish bladder disease and I have decided to start over with a few easy tropicals mainly for my daughter to "get her feet wet". We have 5 Cory's (spotted and Panda) and 3 long finned Zebra Danios. We are faithfully completing a 30% water change every week and have one Anubia with standard lighting and small stones. (no fancy substrate yet). I keep a bit of aquarium salt in at about the rate of 5 tablespoons per 25 gallons. The Danios have been very active and I believe I should add 3 more to school them and discourage the one male from a bit of bossy behavior toward the others. My levels are all good and I would like to add a few more peaceful but interesting fish. Suggestions anyone I have an Emperor 280 filter. Feel free to bump this to the beginners section if appropriate.

Thanks in advance. This seems like a great forum!
Lizzie

Shrimpy

Welcome Lizzie B.. peaceful aye? Try neon tetras and Guppies they are peaceful and beautiful

COBettaCouple

Welcome to fishlore! Yes, 3 more long finned zebra danios would be good to make them happy and better tankmates to the other fish. Those 3 danios would bring your tank to 22" of adult fish and leave you with just 3" of room left. You might want to browse the fish at: http://www.fishlore.com/TropicalFishProfiles.htm to see if you can find a fish that you like that grows to 3" or less and is happy by itself.. A couple of Otos could also fit in the 3".

sgould

Welcome!

Kevin

you could get some type of dwarf gourami with the extra 3"

COBettaCouple

i'm not 100% sure if the danios would play nice with the gourami but with 6 the odds do improve though and there are some beautiful gourami to be found so that's an worth considering for sure.

Lizzie B

Thanks for all your replies! I did purchase 2 additional long fin Danios and all water parameters are stable. I am just a bit cautious with adding fish too quickly in a smaller tank. Anyhow, I did notice some lovely Sunset Gouramis and thought one would certianly come in under the 3 inch rule. I also saw cherry barbs, various tetras, and neons but I just feel the neons would not do well. My pH is 8.0 and my water is on the moderately hard side.

Any other thoughts would be greatly appreciated!
Lizzie

COBettaCouple

a sunset gourami sounds like a good addition after the last danio is added. I don't worry too much about the pH really. Is the store you get your fish at fairly close? if so, they probably have similiar pH and the fish would be used to it. acclimating them to the tank water slowly helps with that. we have 7.8 on our tap water.

cress10

Yeah same thing happened to me. My goldies all went on me, then I decided to do tropicals. I like them better. LOL

Stradius011

Welcome to Fishlore!!!

BettaBuddy ~ Miley

Lizzie B

Thanks so much, everyone! I now have 5 long fin zebra danios and 5 cory cats ( a mix of one panda and 4 spotted) and I also have one Anubia plant that seems to be doing well. I am getting a bit of a diatom outbreak and was wondering if a few oto cats would help. I don't want to overstock but I am doing 30% water changes every week and the water params are excellent.

Thanks for your comments,
Lizzie

COBettaCouple

otos LOVE diatoms and most go right to town on that.. they love it so much that i would put a diatom covered decoration from another tank in their tank while they were in quarantine and it always was clean in less than a day, even silk plants would have every surface cleaned.

Lizzie B

Thanks! I had heard that. What do you think of my fish load? I don't want to go overboard but as i am planning on putting in more live plants and do the 305 water change weekly, I thought it would work.
Opinions??
I forgot to mention, the Danios are no longer nippy with each other and I don't think I need to add another one of them at this time.

COBettaCouple

Right now you've got 5" of fish available and 3-4 otos would be fine in your tank, i think.