40 gal community questions
 

I recently got a 40 gal breeder tank, and I was looking to make it a south american themed community.
I was wondering what species of fish you all would recommend, and different kinds of plants. The tank currently has a sand substrate and a pennywort plant.

Rams, corys, neons, black phantom tetras, glowlight tetras, cardinals, lemon tetras. Just some ideas. Amazon swords plants, dwarf swords, green cabomba, water milfoil. Saw these plants in an amazon rain forest pool setup and it really looked nice.

If you take a look at Byron's tanks, I think he has an Amazon biotope (or at least themed); that should give you some ideas. Or just do a google search and you'll come up with hundreds of ideas. But most importantly, the fish you will be able to stock depend on your tap water GH and KH. Most South American species are softwater fish. If you have hard water, you could try for a Central American livebearer biotope. I've been looking into this a bit myself, and it seems pretty neat and unique.

As Izzy mentinoed, water parameters--GH and pH--are crucial for many of the fish species from Amazonia. And yes, I have two Amazon geographic tanks and one which is basically Amazonian at present: the 115g Amazon riverscape, 70g flooded Amazon forest and the 33g Lagoon. Photos are under "Aquariums" below my name on the left.

Byron.