Serpae or White Skirt tetras with cichlids?

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Anything that looks like a silver dollar falls into the I hate them category unfortunately.

Columbian are ok...seem to be hard to source here though, everywhere is out of stock.
 
jjohnwm said:
But it was always a bit of a disappointment to me that, once settled in and comfortable, they didn't really "school" anymore. Even in an 8-foot tank they start to get pretty cocky and just go their own ways; you have a scattering of tetras throughout the tank, each doing his or her own thing, swimming every which way and not really paying much attention to each other. To me, a lot of their charm is when they are schooling, but unless you keep them off-balance and terrified all the time...not recommended! :)...that behaviour pretty much vanishes.

Have you considered livebearers? Swordtails and cichlids look great together. I don't know anything about O.heterospia; is it a harder-water higher-pH cichlid? If so, swordtails, mollies or Goodeids like Xenotoca or Ameca would be a perfect fit, better than tetras from soft acid water.
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I wondered about that. Videos I've watched seemed to show them sort of all over the place, so got the impression they maybe didn't school the way I want them to. Seems like the things that do school, are just itty bitty (makes sense of course). Hrmph.

I currently have platies in another tank (with my red claw crayfish), and someone else mentioned live bearers as well. I don't know about swordtails, but platies are an all over the place type as well. I'll look into the swordtails...
 
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What about rainbows? I know geographically they're not accurate, but as long as care requirements jive with what I have I don't *really* care about where they naturally are on a map when it all boils down.

Or congo tetras. Those are pretty!
 
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I was reluctant to suggest this, for fear of disturbing the biotope police, but...if you feel, as I do, that similar environmental requirements and compatible behaviour are the only criteria that matter...then I think that the obvious choice here for reasonably-large, non-swallowable, attractive, active "schooling" fish is the Tiger Barb. People who buy 2 or 3 of them and drop them into a 10-gallon community with angelfish and neons give Tigers a bad rap, IMHO. A sizeable group in your sizeable tank are showstoppers and won't cause problems.
 
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Yeah, Tigers. Filamentosas or Denison Barbs, would good choices.
 
Well mostly because I've only ever heard how much they are tyranncial little monsters lol.

I actually just got back from the LFS the next town over and now have 16 (maybe 15, think one is something else possibly) little congo tetras settling into the 55gal for QT. I grabbed some lyretail dalmation mollies that I fell in love with too on a whim...haven't decided end game tank for those yet. Just had to have them.

I do really like the look of tiger barbs so will keep them in mind as a back up plan.

Thank you all :)
 
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Agree with tigers barbs. Never had them before but I got a bunch of tigers barbs as a gift for my friends tank and I was really surprised how tightly they schooled.

He has a honduran red point pair and that was enough to get them to stay in a tight formation and for me to consider them for future tanks.
 
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