Cold water tank suggestions

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jaws7777

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Mar 1, 2014
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White house 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington
I have a 30 gallon that is housing a grumpy a.metae but hope to get it back in the main tank in the next couple of months.

I was thinking about doing a cold water tank but have no experience with them.
Wanted some suggestions i kind of like sunfish would a dollar sunfish work long term ?

From some reading i have done it looks like they dont get too big. Also wanted to go with live plants. The tank will be in a dark part of basement. Read that hornwart does well in cold water.


Any suggestions ?
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+1 to both things you are considering. Hornwort melts on me a lot so be prepared for that mess, but otherwise if you can keep it alive it does well in some crazy conditions. Dollar sunnies I believe stay very small. in a 30 gallon you could have a relatively nice darter setup if you wanted. One of the best fish I've ever kept. pretty personable, learn you mean food very quickly and move around a lot.
 
How about a crawfish tank?
 
I plan on trapping me a crawfish this summer (for one of my cold water tanks).....unless I can find a bait shop that has them
 
I like darters too how many would work in that tank.

What other plants would work ?

Also like longear sunnies and florida flag fish

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jaws7777 said:
I like darters too how many would work in that tank.

What other plants would work ?

Also like longear sunnies and florida flag fish

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Click to expand...

Finally dragged into the natives game jaws :D. I'd say you could do 8-12 darters depending on species plus 1-2 schools of Cyrpinids (minnows, shiners, dace, etc). Rainbow Darters are a good one to start with, avoid Greensides until you get a bit of experience, they're very fragile IME and I keep nitrates under 5ppm in my darters tank at all time via every other day WCs. You could do probably 5 northern longears in that setup, centrals get a big large unless you're just keeping one. Flagfish are notorious plant eaters so I'd not recommend them for your setup.

Theres also the misconception that all native fish are coldwater, which is false. While for darters and shiners I try to keep temps under 70 all the time, fish like sunnies can take up 78-80 comfortably. I've actually found sunfish in my local lake lively quite successfully in 3" deep, 88 degree, very turbid, and low oxygenated water in the summer. Though I'd not keep sunfish over 78 as stated before. Shoot me a PM if you need any info on certain species.
 
Hey dive....i really like the look of the longear. Are they fragile like the darters ?

One longear and some plants ? They stay under 8 inches ?

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jaws7777 said:
Hey dive....i really like the look of the longear. Are they fragile like the darters ?

One longear and some plants ? They stay under 8 inches ?

Sent from my SM-G900P using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
Click to expand...

Longears aren't to bad, I'd just keep the water as clean as you can, weekly WCs shod be fine for those guys. The northern strain averages 3-6" (8" about max) and the central strain averages 5-8" (10" max). A single male bull central longear could work in a planted 30 but id always recommend darters, just be sure to filter well with darters. You don't have to do WCs every other day like me, just keep nitrates under 20ppm and you're fine.
 
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