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well ..im getting a 10-gallon tank ..and although i know its not gunna hold what all i want. im only 15 i cant afford what i want right now ..so i was wondering .Im going freshwater, and i would atleast want a sucker fish or two, a very small crab maybe, a various small pretty fish. No bigger than 3 or 4 inches. so ..what could i do with this?

thanks
Katelyn

[a href="mailtourplemonkey625@comcast.net"]purplemonkey625@comcast.net[/a]

Welcome to FP!

Stocking a tank is a lot of fun, but you don't have tons of choices with only a 10 gallon. For really bright, colorful and easy fish, livebearers like platies and guppies are a good choice. Gouramis are nice too, making a striking centerpiece fish.

I'm not exactly sure when you say sucker fish, if you are talking about a pleco, it is really not a good idea in your tank. Almost all plecos will outgrow the tank, and they have huge bio-loads.

What I suggest you do is to go to your local fish store, bring a pen and paper, and write down all the names of the fish you like. Bring the list back, and we can help you figure out the stocking.

HTH

[span class="edited"][Edited by solublefish 2004-09-06 19:46][/span]

You should check out the articles on this site for help stocking your new tank as well. The suggestion of livebearers in the above post is a great reccomendation, because they are so easy to take care of, and they're colorful as well. Make sure that you cycle your tank before you add your fish. If you have any more questions about stocking or cycling, we'll be more than happy to help.

Good luck and have fun choosing.

if u like fish that school u can go with tetras guppies
if u like color ful fish go with the guppies but if u
like schoolin fish go with the tetras i would go with tetras because they look more bice i likeneon tetras
go here if u want to check out wut is a neon tetra http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_Display.cfm?siteid=21&pCatId=1097&TopCatId=890
here are other tetras
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/scateg.cfm?siteid=21&pCatId=890&TopCatId=890
these are the guppies
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/scateg.cfm?siteid=21&pCatId=1100&TopCatId=1100
and u said u would like sucker fish go with some cory cats they stay small and they are nice and they clean ur tank sand will be better than gravelbecause gravel will make he barbell on the cory shorter and the barbells are very useful they need they too eat corys will become timid if they are alone so u need 3 or more tetras will stress if u dont have more than 6 guppies will survive with 3
here is a link of some corys
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/scateg.cfm?siteid=21&pCatId=1161&TopCatId=1161
and the thumb rule is 1nch 4 every gallon so if u go with the tetras u can get 4 corys and 6 tetras
but if u go with the guppies u can get 3 guppies they get 2 inches and 4-7 corys

well ..thank all of you ...Youve given me some very nice ideas. and inspired some. Neon tetras my mom said she wanted me to have just because she really likes them. But my grandmother also told me that they dont live very long. Guppies those would be cool. I saw a kissing gourami and, oh man. I really loved that fish. but then i saw how big it can get and i was kinda dissappointed. but This is my first tank and hopefully ill keep moving on up.

oh and to my first person who posted me a responce ..yes I did mean pleco. Sucker fish is what i always called them. But all the ones i ever saw were only about ..3 or 4 inches.

would you recommend any snails. like the albino snails..i think that would be cool to have

If you like gouramis, a honey gourami or dwarf gourami will fit in your tank nicely along with a school of neon tetras.

A neon tetra can live a couple of years. You want to make sure your tank is cycled in some way before you get them because they are sensitive to ammonia. In a 10-gallon tank you could have about 8 neons and a dwarf gourami.

><>

hi Katelyn!

welcome to FP.... from fingerling to small fry

ya neon tetras can be e to diseases, i gues it really depends where u get them from and your luck of the draw. iv kept some neons that have lasted me a long time and others that die within a few months. ask your LFS how often they buy neons, and how long the ones in their store have been in there. if they are fresh (especially if they are imported!) let them settle for a couple of weeks before buying. well thats what was recommended to me, but i myself rarely go thru with in, m a bit of a impulse buyer! make sure you look at them closely and pick the health ones (even though the LFS attendant might get a bit annoyed coz they aint the easiest things to single out and catch!)

you may want to try cardinal tetras instead, they are very similar to neons but are a bit more colorful, they have red all the way down their bodies. they are also apparently more hardy then neons. heres more info on cardinals.

http://www.fishprofiles.com/profiles/fw/profile.asp?id=Paracheirodon+axelrodi

REMEMBER! they r a schooling fish, so rule of thumb get about six of them

oh wow ..i really like the suggestions for fish im getting. Lets see. I really liked the apple snail. Hes gunna make me very happy if i can find one. I liked the dwarf and honey gourami's, and the guppies those were cute. The cory cat, I liked. My grandmother has a small shark fish. Iridescent(sp?) Maybe i shouldn't go with any of those right now but ..Ill definantly want one sometime.
Oh yeah, im kinda wanting a betta too. My tank will hold all these i hope. ill just have to wait and see what my local fish stores have.
but thank you all!! all your suggestions are helping tremondously.

Iridescent sharks get bigger than 10 gallon tanks. Not bigger than the tank can hold, bigger than the tank itself. So don't do it. The rule of thumb is to only get one inch of fish per gallon of water in the tank. With really little fish like neons or male guppies you can stretch that a little... don't get them all at once unless the tank is cycled, and avoid stocking too many fish (an easy thing to do in a 10 gallon tank)

><>

I think its irridescent sharks that get 3' and are meals wherever they are native to...
I'm unsure about plecos, because the pitbull pleco only gets around 2", but all plecos do poo a lot (possibly stressing the bio-load)
Go with the others, cause IMO you could probably only keep the pitbull if it was alone/close to alone

Anybody mention ottos, hmm?
Some say they are pretty sensitive to water parameters, but besides that they will live a long time

pitbull
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/loricari/parotoci/236_f.php

ottos
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/loricari/otocincl/107_f.php

edit: ottos belong to the same family/genus/something as plecos

[span class="edited"][Edited by 2004-09-07 22:06][/span]

If you want 10 gallon plecos with a little more spice to them;

sideburn, starry, and angelicus BNs stay samll, as do queen arabesques, zebras, and several other hypancistrus sp.

Ok, you've gotten a lot of ideas, but you can't go with them all in this 10 gallon. They are very small, smaller than you think. Stocking them is hard. How about:

1 female betta (males' long fins can get nipped, and they can't swim against a current very well)
6 neon tetras
1 apple snail
3 guppies (all male)

As it was said before, iridescant sharks get WAY too big for a 10 gallon, and probably too big for the tank it is housed in now. Cories school like tetras, so you have to have at least 6. As far as the crabs go, they would eat your fish when they could catch them. They don't live very long in a fully aquatic environment anyways.

In that tank you don't really have room for a fish to be an algae eater. Your snail will do that. You could also have shrimp like ghost or amano shrimp to help cleanup.

No one yet has explained the nitrogen cycle, so I'll try to.

Fish produce ammonia. This comes from their waste, and some from their respiratory system. Ammonia is toxic to fish.

There are bacteria that "eat" ammonia and produce nitrite as a byproduct. Nitrite is also toxic to your fish, but not as toxic as ammonia.

There are bacteria that "eat" nitrite. They produce nitrate. This is the least toxic, and fish can handle about 40 ppm of it until they start getting stressed. This you get out in weekly water changes. Plants also use up nitrate.

So, basically, in the cycle, you have to culture this bacteria that will prevent your fish from being poisoned. This can be done by adding pure ammonia to a tank to start the bacteria reproducing, or by adding some hardy fish that can withstand the ammonia and nitrite.

The cycle is an EXTREMELY important part of fishkeeping. Without it, our fish would all die.

Anyways, sorry for the rather long post, and welcome to FishProfiles!

---

They shade the glow of it with their mossy-misty costumes,
They wear masks of silk, porcelain, brass, and silver,
So as not to mislead with their own, ordinary faces.

okay wow ...im getting a lot of suggestions, and as i look at all the pictures of these fish im wanting them all. The schooling fish. I dont know. I wouldn't want 6 of 1 kind of fish ...when i could have a couple of some different ones. I Really liked..oh man i dont even remember what it was. oh yeah , the pitbull one and the other one..otto. If those are good .maybe one ..just because their pretty.

Before i know it im gunna be wanting a 30 gallon or 50. My room wont hold that. lol.

oh and thank you for explaining the nitrogen cycle thing to me. Im gunna need some education because I really have no clue. So ..stuff to go in my tank like plants and such, i dont know but ..i want a rock! lol something for a fish to hide behind. lol i think im a little too excited. . but i wont be getting my tank until christmas or my birthday , or if im lucky this fall. so ..I have plenty of time to be educated by everyone.

I started with a 10 gallon two years ago...now I have the 10 gallon...and a 55 gallon...and a 62 gallon...and a 100 gallon...all in my one-bedroom apartment...

As for the stocking, cycling, and possibilities, you're doing your research at the right time. It'll take longer than that to get the hang of it all...

I recommend you read a lot of posts in these forums, especially concentrating on the [Livebearers Lane]http://www.fishprofiles.com/interactive/forums/forum.asp?id=9[/href] (that's where you'll find posts on guppies), Tetra Talk]http://www.fishprofiles.com/interactive/forums/forum.asp?id=14[/link] (where you'll find stuff on tetras such as neon tetras), and [link=Getting Started )will help you with some of the first things you need to think about with your first tank)...

PM/email/msg me if you have any questions/comments regarding me or my knowledge or if you want me to read a thread.