Anyone have a monster tank with small fish?

[philfreenode]

I'm new to the forum. I always liked the idea of monster fish. But right now I have a couple "small" tanks, 20g & 55g. Anyway I like the idea of 150g+ tanks but I was wondering if anyone has a monster tank with large schools of small fish? Say schools of 20+ of 1"-3" fish. I was wondering if it would be cool with a natural looking setup tank with a couple schools of about 30 fish each and then a few community center piece fish.

I plan to get an 8-10 foot tank soon and transfer my guppy tank and pacu pond to it. I think it will be beautiful with a population of tiny fry to adult guppies, with some larger fish like silver sharks and the pacu. the tiny fish will really make the large fish stand out and make them look bigger

 

[scalesandfins]

The only way I see this being a bad thing is it won't be much of a display tank, but how a bowl is better than a large tank for any fish I don't understand... for the person being selfish maybe but not better to be in a bowl from the fishes point of view

dont betas live in puddles and like rice patties where there is not much water? i think it might stress them out to be in a huge tank. but thats just my idea. i know some ball pythons that would rather be in a bin barely big enough for them to move than a big fancy cage. it might be similar

 

[ratrodmike]

I had 15 tiger barbs, 6 giant danios, and 5 clown loaches in my 150 before i got my big fish. The loaches would school with the tiger barbs most of the time. Pretty cool to see. When I move my monsters to a bigger tank, I think I will go that route with the 150 again, but planted

 

[jclyde13]

Lol if I had aripimamans 52k gal I would stock it with a Beta and 6 cardinal tetras

Hm, I wasn't aware that there were two different members who have 52,000g tanks....

I would love to figure out a tank that can house a complete biotope (might be the wrong word....ecosystem maybe). Essentially pick an area (amazon, congo river, african lakes etc etc) and stock the full gamut of fish. Everything from your tetra sized minis to your ornate bichirs, snakeheads, pacus whatever. Have enough room & natural setup in the tank that the little fish breed fast enough to be a REAL food source for the larger & the larger fish breed into natural selection.

I think that would be ****ing SWEET...albeit unreasonable

Yeah, that would be cool, but it would probably take a tank the size of arapaimag's to pull it off.

 

[postshawn]

a large tank with a gang of schooling fish would look like this:

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cardinals

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tank is 10 feet long.

Those are cool. That's what I'm talking about. Thanks for posting. It just seems as natural as we can get with tanks to me. I mean thinking of even a big fish in a 200g tank. It's still like a person living in an apartment and never leaving. Unless you go crazy you'll never have a whole river or stream flowing through your house but to see a tank large enough for a school of fish to actually take some real time to get from one end to the other seems like the closest thing. Those planted tanks really look good though.

 

[Cartel]

I would love a huge planted tank with hundreds of cardinals

 

[Tristans]

When I upgrade my tank later in my life the 1,000g tank will either be stocked with 1 GIANT shoal of one type of fish (1,500 ) or a couple GIANT fish (1 - 10) either way it will be mouthwateringly awesome!!!!!