Angelfish, Tetras... give me some ideas for my forthcoming aquarium!

[kreeves]

I'm in the very early stages of thinking about setting up a freshwater aquarium (I currently keep turtles, and I kept fish as a kid), and I'm trying to figure out what sort of setup I'd be interested. I know I want a planted aquarium, probably with a pair of black angelfish and a school of neon or cardinal tetras. Beyond that, I'm thinking some zebra loaches to take care of the snails (and they'll eat left-over food as well, right?) and probably a bushy nose pleco as well. Any suggestions for numbers and tank size?

[Gunnie]

I believe the cardinals and the neons are food for angels in the wild. If you want to have them in the same tank together, just be aware of that. If you are looking for color, you may want to consider some of the rainbow species instead which would also make your tank stunning.


Rainbowfish online

Zebra loaches would be awesome! I'm not sure how big they get or how big your tank is gonna be, but I would guess you are looking to set up at least a 29 gal. tank for the angels. I think the loaches will probably have to be in a group of 3 minimum. Here's a great place to check out loaches:

Loaches

Click on the loaches species index. I have 4 yo yo loaches currently in a 20 gal. long community tank and they bring such personality to the tank. Hope these links help you with your research.

[osteoporoosi]

Angels grow up to size of a dinner plate, so they need much of space. 50cm from the bottom to the top of the tank would be perfect.
Neons and cardinals aren't a good idea, but other tetras do well. For example glowlights, cherry barbs and other tetras that aren't so "narrow" to fit into angels mouths.

[Guppy123]

Black skirt tetras would porbably do nicely since mine are about 2.5 inches long and almost 2 inches tall

[Lexus]

Angelfish will eat neons, I've experienced it. Personally you probably will get addicted to fish so I would start out with the largest tank you can afford.

[judya]

Yeah, go for a 55 if you have the space and money. It's a nice size. The bigger the tank, the easier to keep water quality stable, and more possibilities for stocking.

You can avoid snail problems if you inspect any plants brought in for snails and snail eggs (eggs are usually a jelly-like mass attached to a leaf) or treat the plants before putting into the tank - Check the index for treatment solution. Then you could skip the loaches and get a nice bunch of cory cats (corydoras) - favorites of mine - which have a good personality and quite a few different patterns. They like company so half a dozen would be good. Bushy nose pleco would be fine. You could also (or instead) get otocinclus catfishes - a small algae eating fish.

Neon tetras if large would go with angels while the angels are younger but do make expensive fish food (as I also found out). Almost any other tetras would be fine - anything but congo, which get big. Other possibilities are danios, rasboras, some of the barbs - each of these are schooling fish and the minimum quantity would be 6 of a species.

If you like the black fish theme, then zebra danios (black and white), harlequin rasboras (rasbora heteromorpha) - black and sort of reddish orange, and pearl danios would all fit and are nice fish. Also black skirt tetras - although they lose the black with age and can get snippy.

With two angels you may get lucky enough to get a pair. That would be cool!

[euRasian32]

It's good that you're researching way before hand, you can avoid a lot of common mistakes with newly established tanks. This is a great forum for all of your aquarium related questions. Get the biggest tank you can afford. The initial purchase may make you wince, but it gets cheaper as you progress, especially on the freshwater side.

Be sure of your decisions before you dive in, and do as much research as possible on the plants and fish that you want. If you want a bunch of different fish, make sure the fishes water chemistry requirements are somewhat similiar. A example of a big no no is having african chichids with discus. Discus require acidic water with a ph of around 6.5, and africans require alkaline water, pH of about 7.8 or so.

Research "cycling", if you're already familiar then do a bit of memory joggin. Decide if you want to try fishless cycling which is becoming more popular, or the basic cycling with fish. If you've already got a list of the fish you want, choose 1 or 2 of the hardiest fishes, to be able to withstand higher toxicity levels of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates.
How dense do you want the tanks to be planted? Again, research as much as you can. I'd recommend that you check the plant forum out here, there's lots of great, knowledgable people who are always willing to help. Then decide if you want to go with a low-tech soil/laterite substrate, or an advanced set up using CO2 injection and all the fancy stuff.

Plan in stages, and avoid adding more fish during the cycling process. If you decide you want to plant medium to heavily, I'd work on your aquascape first and add the starter fish shortly after. I've recently gotten into lots of live plants and it's truly the way to go IMO. Beginners should target "hard to kill" or "low light plants". Check out fish-forums.com's store. Click on "Aquarium and Pond plants" to the left, and then click "plant assortments". You're research should be easy if you start there.

Good luck and happy fishkeeping

[judya]

euRasian32 - good point about the pH - it's also better to get fish that match the pH you currently have, so water changing is easy, rather than trying to change pH to give the fish what they do best in.

osteoporoosi - just an aside - you mentioned cherry barbs and other tetras - cherry barbs aren't tetras, they're barbs