Help me stock a 135 gallon tank

epsilonvaz

I love small fish in a large tank! Be sure to post pics!

aunt kymmie

Yoyos! I have them in my tank and just love them. They are incredibly social and it's a kick to watch their crazy antics. Great fish, IMO.

tophat665

OK, Get plants. Just get low light plants. Stick a pair of shoplights over the tank and you have 160 watts. Hygrophilia, pennywort, Wisteria, Java Fern, Java Moss, Dwarf Sags, Amazon Swords, Crypts, these will all do well. Seriously, if you want to keep angelfish, then live plants are nearly mandatory.

Go with a half dozen angels and a half dozen festivums for the midwater. Get a half dozen Keyholes Cichlids, Rainbow Cichlids, or Flag Acaras (aka Curviceps). Add a school of 20 rummies and a school of 15 Lemon Tetras. Put in 5 Striped Loaches, 12 Cories (All the same kind from the follwing list: Bronze, Albino, Pepper, Panda, Sterbas, Gold Laser, Green Laser, Venezulan Black, Schwartzs, Multipunctatus, or Axelrodi. Do not get Bronchis), and 2 to 4 algae eaters (Bristlenosed Pleco, Farlowella, Royal Farlowella, Clown Pleco).

Make sure you put in lots of caves, lots of driftwood, and at least a couple of slates leaning, and smooth, flat stones on the substrate.

If you Don't want to plant, skip the angels and go for Central American cichlids.

aunt kymmie

I like your stocking idea. It sounds like a tank I'll have to consider. It sounds great.

CathyJ

I like this stocking idea too. Thank you so much for spelling out which plants will live under low light. And which areas of the tank the particular fish use, and the numbers I could have. I have added a couple plants, and they seem to be doing okay. I will try a few more soon.

I am an avid hobbiest in saltwater, but am fairly new to freshwater. Things are very different. Every ones responses have saved me a million hours of research time! Thanks all!

aspects

the clown loaches will be fine in a 135. while they CAN grow to be 12-16", their growth rate is so extremely slow, that you will probably never see it. it will take them a year to reach the 6" mark, and thats the fast part of their growth. and as they are bottom dwellers, there is still tons of room on the mid and high side of the tank for more tankmates.

aspects

or you could go, bare bottom, some driftwood and river rocks, and 200 exodon paradoxus

tophat665

Now, if I were to have a brand new 135 to stock, I think I would start with setting up an end to end current, burying the manifold in fine, smooth gravel, distribute around a bunch of river jacks and driftwood, liberally greened with Java Fern, and some Hygrophilia angustifolia at the downstream end with the stems protected from rooting fish by the aforementioned river jacks. Maybe some potted swords along the back of the tank. Into this I would put 8 to 10 clown Loaches, 3 Bristlenosed plecos, 3 SAEs and about a dozen Bengal Danios.

HOWEVER, if I were going to put any angelfish in there, particularly veil tails, I would avoid clown loaches. They get a little bit nippy. In fact, I would avoid any loaches but B. striata, B. kubotai, and P. kuhli (or maybe other Pangio species). It has been my experience that all but the most peaceful botiine loaches (Even sidthimunkis) nip, not out of aggression but curiosity and playfulness. They'd put a quick hurtin' on a veil tailed angel.

Come to think of it, if I had to have veil tailed angels in the tank, I would lose the Festivums too, and limit my color cichlids to Laetacara spp. That being the case, 8 Angels, 4 to 6 Laetacara curviceps, Bump it to 30 rummies and 20 lemons, add a tight lid and a school of a dozen silver hatchets (get the pure silver ones - the ones with the line are actually river hatchets, and they get a bit bigger.) Then the Loaches, Cories, and algae eaters as described.

Alternately, go with a really sparse planting schema - Sand substrate, sword plants in clay pots with the roots covered by river rocks. Lots of driftwood, though, particularly the branchy kind (manzanita if available). To that, add 8 Angels, 20 Hatchets, 3 Whiptail Catfish, and Eartheaters of one sort or another (Probably Geophagous steindecheri or Satanoperca daemon or S. jurupari, but there are a ton of them out there) 6 to 12 depending on the size of the available species. This is all about making the sides and ends full of really branchy, tangly driftwood for the angels to hide in, the swords for them to center their territories on, and a big expanse of rock studded sand for the Eartheaters to plow. Oh, and I'd probably put some Brazillian pennywort, just floating, to give the Hatchets some overhead security.

tophat665

Cut that back to about 30 and you have a heck of a tank there.

aspects

30? bahahahahhahahaha. umm. no.
with such a small number in a large tank, it will just be boring. trust me, i have done both. :)