behold, my ideas for stocking my 20 gallon tank. I'm upgrading from a 6 gallon, my 20 gallon is cycling with live plants and a few ember tetras because I already had them in my 6 gallon (I'm changing 10-20% of the water every 5ish days). so I'm twiddling my thumbs deciding on my fish, please convince me why I should or should not pick the ones on my list!
schooling fish: rummy nose tetras, all-male endler's livebearers, white cloud tetras, or adding to the ember tetras I already have. i thought I could get 2 different groups of 6ish schooling fish each but after inputting it into AqAdvisor, it appears maybe I can only support 1 group of 6ish schooling fish? bummer. i have a fluval AC 20 filter.
clean up/bottom dwellers: 4 cory catfish. that's it LOL I'd love a pleco but don't want to deal with the waste
centerpiece: 1 dwarf gourami or 1 pearl gourami. I reeeeeeally want a dwarf gourami but am not sure if I want to flip a coin on if the fish will have iridovirus or not.
thanks for the help!
Posted by Slimbert292
2 Comments
A taller 20gal like that will limit your stocking choices a little bit due to it having a smaller footprint than a 20gal long, and horizontal swimming room is most important for fish!
I’d definitely expand your ember tetra school! I do not recommend rummynose tetras because they’re very active and can be difficult to acclimate. I have 7 in my 20gal long and it took several tries for me to get healthy ones, and I had to drip acclimate them for over 1 hours! But my tank is rather heavily planted and they seem like they’d benefit from a bigger tank. but yeah sticking with 1 bigger school rather than several small schoola will probably look nicer and make the fish happy too.
I have a honey gourami in my 20gal long and I recommend one for a small tank like yours over other gourami species (make sure you get an actual honey as opposed to a thick-lipped gourami which are often sold as honeys as well). Honeys are the smallest and most chill gourami species- I don’t have experience with pearls but dwarf gourami can be feisty, and are also prone to dying from a specific virus.
I would make it 10 total Ember Tetras, a group of Corys like 6, and a Honey Gourami! Dwarfs are pretty but you already know about the virus, pearls are gorgeous but bigger and more aggressive.