Looking for advice on stocking my tank

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C

C.Bargman

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Aug 3, 2015
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Hello all I am new here but hope you all can offer me some advice.

I currently Have a 170 Gallon Tank that has been setup for about 6 months. Initially my plan was to make it a giant planted tank but I decided against that because I was having to much trouble with the small fish getting sucked into my filter. Yeah I know there are some ways to solve this but I just felt like taking it in a different direction. So I started looking at doing salt... After one trip to the store I realized that salt would cost me so much more than I wanted to spend that it was very quickly crossed off the list.

So now I am looking to do some larger fish that will fill the tank and be something that most people can not fit in their tanks. I have looked at a lot of eels and rays but at the end of the day decided against them because I want to stay away from scaleless. My top contender right now is the Arowana but am under the impression it will get slightly to big for my tank (at least the common species). As well I would really love to keep some crayfish if at all possible.

So IF the Arowana is out the next best thing I have found is either the needle nose gar or the Banded Leporinus. I think the Leporinus would actually look really nice as it is small enough I can get a small school of 3 or 4 of them (Granted I have not done much research on this fish yet to say if this is possible) Then if I could mix in some colorful Cychlids and some cray fish it should be a really nice tank.

Anyway. Any ideas or thoughts are appreciated.
 
Idk how big the gar gets but one gar up at the top with a bunch of crawdads on the bottom with lots of hiding places would be pretty sweet and some plants too. They might destroy the plants though
 
Needle nosed gar don't look like much and stay quite small.. I have a buddy with a school of pirhana that look nice in that size tank.. Personally I prefer larger wolf species but they are less active however more aggressive and quite personable. If an upgrade is possible in the future there are tigerfish and payara species as well.. A large community could be pretty cool and you could still plant it somewhat... I guess I really depends on what you want out of the tank... A wetpet or a larger showpiece fish.. Or even a large active community..
 
You could get a fire eel they have scales, plus I have one in my planted tank and he doesn't do much damage.
 
One silver arowana for the top
Dither fish such as silver dollars in the middle
clown loaches in the bottom

:D
 
Ilike a small school od redhook silver dollars and a red taile prochilodus flagtail would look cool and an active tank.
 
In my experience SDs are really spooky. Plus he won't be able to do planted then either.
 
Thank you everyone for all the ideas.

I have considered the Fire eel quite a bit. He is one of my favorite but right now it just does not fit the bill of what I feel I can take care of. As well I really like the Elephant nose and the Black Knifefish but both are considered to be more difficult to care for.

I have considered the Pacu over some of the regular red bellies but at the end of the day I'm just not that into most of the really vicious fish with huge teeth. They are fun to watch at a store or a friends house but IMHO most are fairly ugly fish and just not quite what I am going for.

As of now I think the best combination I have come up with that fits as many of my criteria as I think possible is:
A couple Cichlids (Yellow Lab, Blue Neon, Green Terror, Red Texas)
Turtles maybe 2
Plecos
Loaches (yoyo and Clown)

The turtles are my substitute for Crayfish because everything I have read tells me that crayfish will not last long with Cichlids.

As far as planted goes I think at least for now I will just stick to fake plants because I don't need to worry about CO2 injection and a lot of the algae eaters(SAE and Amano Shrimp) will get eaten by the other fish.

Thoughts?
 
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