125 Gallon Stocking List

[TMaxxTim]

Hi, new poster here, but been lurking for a little bit.

Scored a deal on a 125 gallon tank and stand for $100 on CL a few weeks ago and moved my slightly overstocked 38 over to it.

I have 2 Aquatech 30-60's on it for now, so I have about 660gph filtration going but I plan on adding/replacing with a canister filter or 2 in the next month or so, still evaluating my options between a DIY or Pond Canister, or just purchasing a whole canister filter setup, but for what I have now the 2 30-60's are working well.

I'm looking for suggestions/stocking ideas for this 125, thought I'd post in the SA Cichlid forum as I think these will end up being the best types of tank mates for my BPs. Here's what I currently have:

3 Blood Parrots (about 3"-4" currently)
5 Tiger Barb
6 Zebra Danios
2 Green Cory Cats
1 Pleco (about 3" currently)

I have a 29 with an angelfish, and a empty 38 right now so if the Danios or Barbs have to move back into one of those I'm perfectly happy doing that. I'm just trying to setup an ultimate plan for my 125 and wanted to get some good suggestions for tankmates for my BP's. I could probably post over in the Hybirds forum but they don't seem as active as it does over here.

The Tiger Barbs and Zebra Danios were purchased as some dither fish for my BP's as the ones I got seem to be excessively shy.

Can't wait to start throwing more ideas around. I've kept fish for 10+ years now, and I'm nowhere near an expert and have just had small tanks, and I've only had my one angelfish for the last 5, and this is my first "large" tank to figure out what to do with. My "new" interest in the hobby was all started with trying to get the Angelfish a bigger tank and tank-mates, but I've come to discover he probably just needs to be on his own as he wasn't as happy with his tankmates as I would've liked.

I'll get some pictures up as soon as I'm back from Thanksgiving.

 

[Shane Dewar]

you could get a couple of ca/sa cichlids like a pair of texas, or a pair of jd,s and then some smaller fish like cons or firemouths

 

[Chicklette]

^^ If you go with that the corys will not work out. With cichlids corys usually get picked on.

 

[Sarah88]

yeah maybe you could do something milder like severums, and they would have similar shape to your blood parrots

 

[Batboi3000]

I agree with the severum idea. Those would look pretty cool with the parrots. They should get along well too while having a nice contrast of color in the tank.

 

[sampster5000]

2 Cory's is not a good idea. They should be kept in a group no smaller than 5 or 6. In a big tank like that you could do a ton.

I had some parrots about a year ago in with my severums. No aggression shown towards each other at all so I would say this could work out but their behavior is still unpredictable. Parrots are just WEIRD!

Also, what kind of pleco do you have in there?

 

[TMaxxTim]

I was planning on adding some more Cory's soon, they came from my 38 gallon tank along with everything else. The 2 seem to be fine together now, always hanging out side by side, nobody else seems to bug them, but I will add another 3-4 in the next week or two.

I ended up getting a Red Head Synspilum. He's a tad bit bigger than the largest of my BP's, but the shyest of my BP's (one with orange eyes) has already taken to hanging out with the Synspilum, like within 10min of being introduced they started hanging out and have been that way for the last day, we'll see how it goes though.

My other 2 BP's hang out together and don't seem to like the orange eyed BP too much so I'm glad he's finally found a friend. I think the 2 BP buddies may be trying to lay eggs now, they were SUPER protective of their cave when I vacuumed the other day which is odd because they're normally terrified of the vacuum or my hand, so we'll see how that goes as well.

I got the Synspilum at the LFS, the guy recommended either that or some Severum's, but I didn't really like the Severums they had, who knows I might go back and get one or two in another week or two, but I really liked the synspilum's colors. He said they were raised locally by a breeder and that's how they get these particular ones vs. their regular supplier.

The pleco is nothing special, just the hypostomus plecostomus, the ones that get real big, he's only 3-4" for now so we'll see how it goes.

Here's some attachments, pics of the Synspilum and BP's. First BP is the super-shy one (orange eyes), and the other 2 are the buds that love to hang out in the cave. It'll be fun to see what they do when they can't fit in there any more.