For a 20 gallon aquarium, I want:
1 Dwarf or Pea Puffer
2 Male Guppies
4 Female Guppies
5 Platies
4 Ghost Shrimp
8 Neon Tetras
3 Panda Cory Cats
Are there any fish I shouldn’t get? I know this tank will be way overstocked, I am going to moniter my Ammonia very closely and stay on top of the water changes. I have made a shopping cart at an online aquarium supply store and just to let you know how well set up this tank will be, I even bought a refugium for the livebearer fry, of which I plan to give almost all away to a pet store nearby. It will be a planted tank with a piece of driftwood and a big rock. Will this tank work? Please answer!
Pea Puffers are the only freshwater puffers. They also need to eat snails to keep their teeth ground down so they don’t get too long.
Oh, and my mom and I order our fish from liveaquaria.com. great site, we have never had an order we weren’t happy with. And there’s no way they would label a fish incorrectly.
The pleco would eat the leaves off the plants.
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The puffer’s not a good idea, as the previous poster said, they will probably eat the shrimp and any snails you may have. Other than that, he or she may also go after your fish, especially the guppies’ long flowing fins. If you do get one, be sure to watch out for bullying by the puffer, and round or half-moon-shaped bite marks on your other fish. Also, you may want to keep a spare 5-10gal tank that you can put the puffer in if a problem does arise. Finally, the puffer won’t be very healthy if fed on flakes or pellets, so you’re going to have to get some frozen blood worms for him.
And finally, finally, you might want to check out the pufferpedia at http://www.thepufferforum.com and familiarize yourself with what the different puffers look like, as most fish stores don’t know anything about puffers, and will label them incorrectly. Last thing you want to end up with is a GSP that grows 6" long and needs high end brackish to salt water as it matures.
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Edit: dwarf puffers are not the only truly freshwater puffers that are kept in aquariums. Off the top of my head there are also: mbus, abeis, south american puffers, fahakas, pustulus (possibly a colour morf of fahaka), red eyes, red eyes and red tails, modestus..can’t remember any others.
Even if they were the only freshies, puffers really don’t make the best tankmates.
the puffer will eat the shrimp and any snails so he is helpful cuz snails do nothing but bad) but other then that ur good
Everything is ok except a few things. One, your puffer isn’t compatible with your shrimp. These are brackish fish also, and if you want a planted tank, both won’t thrive together. You will also want to change your male to female ratio on your guppies to three females to one male. That will be way less stress to the females as the males are ALWAYS ready to breed. You’ll want to keep that same ratio to your platies as well.
And because you are starting a new tank, be sure and start SLOW. I wouldn’t recommend that you put the panda cories or the neons in until after your tank is cycled (takes about 6 weeks after you have living things in your tank). Keep a close eye on your water quality during this time especially. Your local fish store can test it for you, or you can buy kits to test at home.
If you want your tank to be that stocked you will have to be really really diligent about your maintenance as well.
That’s going to be a pretty tank! Good luck!
I would remove the puffer from the list and then you should be good to go. The tank is heavily stocked, but not too badly, you should be able to keep it running fine as long as you have good filtration and keep up the water changes.
Ian
Trust me ..skip the puffer! They will eat anything and every thing you just listed. Although they are very interesting fish and if you had a second tank you could feed your extra guppy fish to it if you had babies.
I would add some kind of algae eater..perhaps a pleco.
Also ..Is this an established aquarium? If not ..There is no way i would just put all those fish in there all at the same time ..It is loads better to get a few fish at a time. At least set up the tank and let your guppies live there a few weeks and then start adding more.
It has also been my experience that although ghost shrimp are REALLY neat (i loved watching them eat because you can see food going in their stomachs) they are more or less feeders ..almost every fish with take a bite out of one.
Hope that helps.