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My main tank has recently suffered a great tradgedy, resulting in the loss of over half of my fish. I'll explain what happened quickly: My cousin (who knows nothing about fish) got me two 4.5" koi for my birthday in mid-April, and they chased everything in the tank for a week until I could give them away a week later. Due to the stress, nearly all my fish got really bad cases of ich. I tried waiting for a few days to see if it would improve on its own (which it usually does), but it just got worse. Because I have fragile plants and expensive inverts, I couldn't use average treatments like RidIch+ or salt. Before I could finally get my hands on some IchAttack, which is herbal and safe for my plants/inverts, more than half of my fish had died.

The tank is about 50 gallons.

Here's what I had before the "extinction":

12 Cardinal tetras
4 Corydoras sp. C20
4 Corydoras paleatus
4 Corydoras sp. (unknown ones)
3 Corydoras duplicareus
3 Siamese Algae Eaters
2 Corydoras kanei
2 Pearl Gouramis
2 Rio Paraguay Tetras
2 Diamond Tetras
2 Checkerboard Cichlids
1 Snakeskin Gourami
1 Panaque sp. LDA01
1 Chaetostoma sp. L187b
1 Ancistrus sp. L182
1 Upside-Down Cat
1 Curviceps
1 Corydoras bilineatus
1 Corydoras sp. C43

And here is what I have left:

4 Corydoras paleatus
3 Corydoras sp. (unknown ones)
2 Pearl Gouramis
2 Diamond Tetras
1 Corydoras sp. C20
1 Corydoras bilineatus
1 Ancistrus sp. L182
1 Snakeskin Gourami

Not much, eh?

I am looking for pretty much anything rare or unusual (and preferably South American; if it is extremely cool then I'll be willing to go African or Asian), and cost is not a factor. Schooling fish would be great, and I've been eyeing some of the more unusual tetras on AquaBid. I do not want any aggressive cichlids or whatnot, but I like the small peaceful cichlids. I do not want any more Diamond Tetras right now.

Does anybody have any suggestions?

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

What about some festivum.

Festivums in my experience are not only aggressive, but they are avid plant eaters/uprooters/destroyers as well. I think the only cichlids I will even consider are those with a max size of 2" or less.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

What about some cockatoo dwarf cichlids? Or some flame tetras? They're cool!

a teeming mass of tiger barbs.

I saw a nifty auction on Aquabid with some cool pencilfish. They're Nannostomus mortenthaleri (don't know if that is a valid sci. name). I've never seen them before, and they are pretty cool, so that's an option if you're willing to pay the price.
http://www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/auction/auction.cgi?fwcharacins&1116766253

For other Characins, I think that either jelly bean or splash tetras would be cool.

I think that you should get some more cories, too. I really like adolfoi cories, but you may not want them because you already had come Corydoras duplicareus. If you have access to either, C. caudimaculatus and C. guapore are some pretty colorful (for cories) species, and the high dorsal fin of C. macropterus is neat.

Last edited by sirbooks at 21-May-2005 07:59

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

What about some rams or kribensis?

Blue Acaras

___________________________________________

If at first you DO succeed, try not to look astonished.

She already has the pencils, Nick . Sorry to hear about the ich .


Festivums, mean? Young specimens are quite nippy, but really, aside from that, they make great citizens--at least in my experience. I will have to agree, however, that they are, as stated, severly inquisitive, and are thus not compatible with plants.

Naturally, being a loricariid fanatic, I would go for some disc mouthed catfish, specifically a mate for Mr. (or Ms.) ancistrus, and maybe a couple of small hypancistrus.
IMO apistos take up too much room, and should therefore not be considered for the tank. Old world characins such as jelybeans, African black neons, etc. are also a nice, uncommon addition. Also, smaller silurids (kryptopterus sp.) would work, too.

Small cichlids to check out: Nanacara, teleocichla, dicrossus, and laetacara.


Last edited by Cup_of_Lifenoodles at 21-May-2005 11:58

Last edited by Cup_of_Lifenoodles at 21-May-2005 12:41

Go for some rarer plecos.

Corries, corries, corries, and hey just for a change in pacemore corries Oh and you could always add some guppies and neons to it as well hml

"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom." Thomas Carlyle

sorry for your losses, we just had a similar experience, where ich has wiped out one of our smaller tanks.

anyway we have cockatoo cichlids and flame and high fin serpae tetras in our tank, all are lovely. the apistogramma cichlids really colour up nice as they get bigger. ours are still small but we saw some beautiful bigger ones in lfs the other day.

Last edited by _wendy_ at 21-May-2005 13:03

To sort of "test" my tank out to see if it's safe, I bought five black phantom tetras and two small Siamese algae eaters.

I've been looking at several Apistogramma species, but they appear to be somewhat territorial. As far as cichlids go, I'll probably just go with another Curviceps.

I looked at the tetra availability lists from three different distributors, and they didn't have anything that I would consider very rare. They did have Red Arc Pencilfish and the Rio Paraguy tetras however. One thing I did see on the list is a "Four-Eyed Phantom Tetra", which intrigues me. I cannot find any information on it online or in books. Do you guys think I should just take the plunge and order some?

I'm definitely going to up my cory and pleco populations though. But I think before I buy any more corys, I'm going to move my Corydoras concolor group from another tank into my big tank. I keep searching through the bristlnose and clown pleco shipments to see if I can find any cool contaminants.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

The four eye is a megalamphodus species, I believe. In fact, aquabid has an auction for them right now, but I'm sure you already knew that.

Haha... That was one of the auctions I didn't look a because as was browsing through the auctions before, the only part of the title that caught my eye was "Phantom Tetras".

Anyway, those guys look pretty cool... I think I'll get like 12 of them or something. I can get them at wholesale price at $0.80 each.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Well, my Four-Eyed Phantom Tetras didn't come in (neither did about one-third of the other fish the store ordered] so I just got about fourteen Cardinal Tetras. These ones are definitely wild-caught, because they have brilliant colors and they are all different sizes. Some are pretty small, while others are almost full grown.

My new Rummynose Rasboras seem to like schooling with the new Cardinals.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.