New, need to talk about an aquarium project

[brcacti]

Hello everyone, I am new here, I have kept fish a long time ago but not recently. I would like to buy a 300 gallon glass aquarium 96x24x30 sometime in the near future. I have been planing what I want to put in it. So far my list has about 20 fish. I plan to have 2 airators, one at each end about 2.5 feet from each end, power filters. Here is a list of the fish I want to put in it in order.
1. 2 t-barbs
2. 3 pink tailed chalceus
3. 2 silver dollar, Mylopus rubripinnis
4. 2 silver dollar, Myleus schomburgkii
5. 2 silver dollar, Myleus rhomboidalis
6. 2 Bala sharks
7. 2 reg. tinfoil barbs
8. 1 gold tinfoil barb
9. 1 Distichidus lusosso
10. 1 Leporinus faciatus
11. 1 Black shark
12. 1 Tiger oscar
My questions are many, we can start with the following, and I would love to hear from all who have information. With good power filters and 2 airators can I keep all these fish in this tank? Should I introduce them in this order as small fish? I would like to hear all comments, suggestions on this tank project.

 

[Angel51087]

Just a passing comment, don't know if people agree with me; but I find Balas like to be in groups rather than pairs, 3 or more. GL with whatever you choose though

 

[cichlid savage]

My first thought is thats going to be A LOT of fish at adult size. But some people like the overstocked look. What are you tryin to achieve? First decide on your stock. Then work out the mechanics of filtration/lighting etc. Just my .02.
GL with whatever you decide.

 

[BichirAddict]

Instead of a power filter maybe a sump would help you alot in the long run. Pics of tank once you get it.

 

[Onion01]

some of those fish are schoolers, and will be lonely by themselves or in pairs.

 

[Bderick67]

Stocking wise You look to be fine, even with 8-10 of the fish being able to obtain a length of 12" or more. The balas do like to school and will probably school with the tin foils. Your coming up short on filtration though. I would go with a large wet/dry sump for bio-filtration and 4 AC110 for mechanical filtration and water movement. Since I would imagine you would be starting with small fish, you could add the sump at a later date, since the AC110 will have biofiltration too.

 

[brcacti]

I planed on going with 4 balas at first then giving back the 2 smallest when grown up to the LFS. I think they will school with the tinfoils and silver dollars, what do you think?

 

[Angel51087]

if it were me personally i would either
cut down the number of sds,
forget the tinfoils and have 4 balas,
or forget the sds altogether and have 3 tins and 3 balas.
they would possibly school with the tins but for the sake of appearances in the tank i would not make it so there are 2. I saw a tank in the LFS today, they had 10 full grown balas and they looked amazing together. I prefer them over tins anyway

 

[ShadowBass]

I don't know how well a Leporinus and Distichodus would work...
Leporinus, and especially fasciatus can be extremely aggressive to conspecifics, so can Distichodus actually, and while the Distichodus pattern and color looks different the body language is going to be strikingly similar. Even in a very large tank they may not get along with each other, and if you haven't seen the amount of damage a Leporinus's small mouth can do you'd be surprised.

I can stick a 3 foot high jungle val in with my marlbed headstander and Leporinus desmotes and they will destroy it and eat most of it within a day (They're only 5-6 inches long) . I've seen my Leporinus, as a 2 inch baby, rip apart and kill bigger fish within a few hours (not while I was there, I wouldn't let that go on, but I've seen the aftermath).

I wouldn't try it unless you watch them extremely close and plan to potentially have to move one. Even if they appear to get along for a long time one may eventually kill or injure the other one, so just keep that in mind.

You may also have trouble with the Leporinus harrassing the other fish. The problem is they're very fast and they'll go up to other fish, take nips out of their fins, but the other fish can't chase them down.