30 gallon fish tank stock ideas

[Matt724]

I want this as my room's show tank, something for family members/friends to say "woah, nice/pretty fish!". My preliminary setup ideas were either:

(1) 1 male GT or JD with just sand and maybe some rocks as decor

(2) 1 senegal bichir with same setup as (1)

(3) 1 breeding pair of Cryptoheros cutteri

(4) a school (maybe 8-10) tiger barbs with just a central piece of clean driftwood in the center with a sand bottom

And I am totally open to any other suggestions! The only thing is NO PLANTED TANKS WHATSOEVER as my light source will probably be pretty bad.

 

[CICHLID34]

ok well a gt and jd are ok for a few weeks or a couple months. Too big of attitudes to be in a 30. A sen could ;ast in a 30 for a while. I'd say a pair of convicts and a sen with a couple giant danios

 

[jschall]

NO PLANTED TANKS WHATSOEVER as my light source will probably be pretty bad.

Plant it with low light plants - anubias, anacharis java fern, java moss, bolbitis, crypts, vals, etc.
They're very, very easy to keep, especially anubias. I never do anything special for mine except put some seachem flourish in the tank with my water changes, which isn't a necessity. Doesn't particularly matter how much light you have.

I would probably do a centipede knife fish as a sort of "centerpiece" fish and then get some largish tetras (congos?), plus an african butterfly fish if you have a good lid, and grow some anubias (the most common kind - barteri) on driftwood with java fern or anubias congensis (a tall variety of anubias) or bolbitis in the background.

If you're not familiar with java fern and anubias, you just rubber band it to driftwood (I recommend mopani wood) or rock and it attaches itself firmly, you can remove the band in about a month. Usually they come with free snails that will clean up algae. The "pest" snails in my tank crop my algae short and leave my rocks looking a very natural soft darkish green color.

The only other idea I had was you could do shelldwellers, which are little cichlids that hide in shells: http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/cookie_cutter_29g.php

 

[Matt724]

Plant it with low light plants - anubias, anacharis java fern, java moss, bolbitis, crypts, vals, etc.
They're very, very easy to keep, especially anubias. I never do anything special for mine except put some seachem flourish in the tank with my water changes, which isn't a necessity. Doesn't particularly matter how much light you have.

I would probably do a centipede knife fish as a sort of "centerpiece" fish and then get some largish tetras (congos?), plus an african butterfly fish if you have a good lid, and grow some anubias (the most common kind - barteri) on driftwood with java fern or anubias congensis (a tall variety of anubias) or bolbitis in the background.

If you're not familiar with java fern and anubias, you just rubber band it to driftwood (I recommend mopani wood) or rock and it attaches itself firmly, you can remove the band in about a month. Usually they come with free snails that will clean up algae. The "pest" snails in my tank crop my algae short and leave my rocks looking a very natural soft darkish green color.

The only other idea I had was you could do shelldwellers, which are little cichlids that hide in shells: http://www.cichlid-forum.com/articles/cookie_cutter_29g.php

I was thinking about shell dwellers, but they're so hard to get. I was thinking about a pair of lamprologus brichardi, my LFS has some