Need to revamp 58 gallon...grrr...HELP!

[kamanut]

Ok...so I was going to get a lot of rainbowfish for my new 58 gallon (3 foot) tank...buuuut after looking at the prices of the rainbows, I've decided to cut down on them a little....so....I need ideas for other, fairly cheap (like $5 and lower....around $3 per fish being the best price) fish I could put into my tank. Here is what I have so far:

5 Peppered Cories
8 Flame Tetras
2 Blue Rams
2 Flag Cichlids

So...any ideas? I don't really have anything in mind...I'm open to pretty much everything, except I'd prefer to have something that's not in one of my other tanks (but I can make exceptions), inexpensive, fairly hardy, compatible with the above fish, and available in either my LFS or petsolutions.com.

I need as many ideas as possible and all the help I can get!!! Thanks!!

[Clerk]

For your cycling tank, take some media from your other tanks filters, it will be faster/safer.

As for fish, less common tetras are great.

[kamanut]

Thanks, Clerk--what type of cheap, less common tetras are you suggesting?

I'm moving in a week, so I started my tank up just to see how much I could get started, but I can only save 25 gallons, so I'm pretty much going to have to start the cycle over once I move to my new dorm room. I will put some media from my other tanks in it once I am moved though.

[emc7]

Why don't you move over your white clouds and stray bloodfin tetra? $0. Dwarf rainbows are awesome fish, but live food is important esp. for the smallest ones. Don't use old water, use old gravel and filter media. Their very little biology in the water and a lot of nitrates (usually).

A. caucatoides are neat. The females are territorial and the male moves around.

[kamanut]

Three white clouds and the bloodfin is at home--440 miles away.

A. caucatoides are really pretty, but I already have 2 pairs of cichlids in the tank and they are $60 for a pair on liveaquaria. They really are beautiful though--I'm sure I'll eventually own a pair.

[swordtailbreedr]

live foods are good for dwarf neons but not nessisary...at one point for about 4 weeks i was unable to get any good food and all i had was flake food and my dwarf neons were spawning.

I would suggest getting dwarf neons when you know the tank is stable as they are usually around 10 bucks each and a school of 6 would be better than 5 (imo) because 5 school alot less than six do (ime) 60 bucks is alot but they are easy to spawn even in a community tank with just large water changes

[kamanut]

Yeah...I don't feed live food to any of my fish. As I mentioned above, I am not getting rainbows, as they are too expensive ($10 is too expensive), so I'm looking for cheaper fish ($5 max), so I think I'm getting Pearl Gouramis, Flame Tetras, and Cherry Barbs, along with Blue Rams and Flag Cichlids. Will those go together?

[JustOneMore20]

All of those should get along fine. Flame tetras are cool little fish, even though they are just tetras. They like to over eat though (more so than other fish), so watch that when you get them. Cherry Barbs need alot of hiding spots as they are shy fish (or atleast mine are), so plant heavily with live or fake plants.

[swordtailbreedr]

um in a 29g some peral goramis killed a bunch of other fish at my house so i had to take them back

[JustOneMore20]

Thats not normal for Pearls IMO. They are generally one of the more peaceful gouramis. If you only get one, then you'll be fine. If you get more than 1, then I'd get a trio of 1m/2f.

[Obsidian]

I really like my Cherry Barbs. They are funny. The two I most recently added were even trying to spawn in the bag! You need to make sure that you get more females than males or the males will drive them nuts to the extreme. My females are fairly colorful themselves, they just look more orange than red.

[kamanut]

Thanks for all the help guys--I love reading your experiences and opinions--it helps a lot!!

I will have a lot of caves, for my cichlids, and also some fake plants. I will get 3 pearl gouramis, in the trio that you mentioned. Also, with the Cherry Barbs, how do I sex them? I am getting 8 of them, so what is a good m/f ratio? Thanks!

[Obsidian]

For 8 I would get 2 males and 6 females. You might be able to get 3 males and 5 females. They are easy to sex. In the store the red ones (even if they are pale red) are the males. It is important that you look for ALL red over their whole bodies. Those are males. The females will be light on the bottom and red or orange on the top. Usually more orange than red.

Here is a link to my girls:
http://s194.photobucket.com/albums/z...uly2007004.jpg

And here I was able to catch one of my males with one of my females without a flash (affects coloring). you can clearly see the difference in their color. The female is the lighter orangish one on top. They can all be really light in the store so look closely for the all over body coloring which is what often makes the difference.

http://s194.photobucket.com/albums/z...ryBarbs029.jpg

Hope those pics help

[kamanut]

Oh thank you so much! I always wondered why there seemed to be two kinds of Cherry Barbs (and I kinda wondered what breed the others--the females--were...lol...now I guess I know!). I'll have no problem buying them now...lol. So much for thinking that was difficult--in my stores here, the different colors are really obvious...apparently too obvious. Thanks guys--any more info or just general tank hints?