Stocking ideas for an 80 gallon.

[Cablemonkey]

Dimensions are 48x18x23.25 which comes out to about 87 gallons but the sticker on it called it an 80 gallon and I bought it off the guy as a 75 gallon so I guess grats to me for paying $75 for an 85g+ tank!

Anyway, this is the stocking idea I am toying with, semi-aggressive, similar sized, 3-6 of each.


Melon/Panda Bard (Puntius fasciatus)
Firemouth Cichlid (Thorichthys meeki)
Pictus Catfish (Pimelodus pictus)
Black Veil Angelfish (Pterophyllum sp.)
Opaline Gourami (Trichogaster trichopterus)

Thoughts, Ideas? I am a huge NW Cichlid fan but really dont want a bunch of mutts in there from xbreeding... I would like a total of about 15-20 varied fish in the 5-6" range.(a little overstocked but I'll have good filtration) and I know there are millions of fish in the world but I am just not seeing a variety in the size I am looking at. I dont want to have just 5 fish in there and I am already setting up a community tank for the wife so a bazillion 1.5" fish is out of the question... Let me know what you think!

 

[Cablemonkey]

Still looking for opinions

 

[lefty31]

Personally I wouldn't go with all Opaline Gourami (given you said 3-6 of each) Paradise, snakeskin, golds, ect. And others I could think of would be a single red-tailed shark or rainbow shark. Maybe a botia variety that is in that size range......that's all I can really think of off the top of my head atm.

 

[OMGFISH]

... i can't think of any most freshwater fish are huge. All i can think of is some discus, and some small begginers like knife fish, and some chichilds. Usually people have 50-100 gallons as a grow out tank, then they upgrade to like 200-500 gallons. Lets see those fish ^ and i think a birchir? can go in the tank too. They don't grow too big.

 

[Cablemonkey]

All the birchirs I have seen around here get over a ft long. And maybe most people on MFK here use 50-100 gallon as grow out but some of us dont have that kind monster budgets lol. I think I am doing pretty good atm, I plan on getting/building a bigger monster tank someday but it will probably be a year or two since we want to get a bigger place in the next 12-24months. So no point on getting a monster I would have to move soon...

 

[Cablemonkey]

Personally I wouldn't go with all Opaline Gourami (given you said 3-6 of each) Paradise, snakeskin, golds, ect. And others I could think of would be a single red-tailed shark or rainbow shark. Maybe a botia variety that is in that size range......that's all I can really think of off the top of my head atm.

Any particular reason as to why not Opaline? All the research I have done says they get about 5-5.5", is that urban legend size or do you think thats too big to keep 4 of or something else? I am just curious to the reasoning, still learning