75G Tank - Suggestions?

[mrfryc]

Hello - I have not posted on here is some time. My last post was in concern for my ornate bichir, who was awkwardly buoyant in his tail end. The morning after my post I woke up to find him vertical and dead. My LFS said it sounded like he lost his bladder. Either way, the whole ordeal turned me off of getting more fish. However I was in the LFS getting food and I picked up a pair of haplo catfish. I swear I can tell they're gotten bigger in the past few weeks.

Before the bichir died I had started to make arrangements for upgrading to a 75G tank for him. I did some thinking and decided to finish setting up the 75G, but I would like to have it as a community tank instead. Is a 75G tank an appropriate size for having several school of fish (tetras, corys, guppies, ect) as well as several larger fish (by larger I just mean larger then the fish I mentioned). I tried looking for people's personal accounts of 75G community tanks, or suggestions for them, and couldn't find anything, so any info that anyone can provide would be gratefully appreciated.

PS - The one fish I am going to go out of my way to get for this tank is a medusa pleco. My LFS said he can get them from time to time, and that's the first one I'm going after once the tank is setup.

[Nolapete]

There's so many different ways you can stock your tank. The best thing to do is find fish that you like and research them before buying to make sure they can go with the other fish you have.

Start off with inexpensive fish while establishing your tank. You'll be less frustrated when you lose them rather than losing expensive fish like you've already experienced with your ornate bichir.

Just an example of my currently overstocked 90H. I'm moving various fish out once I get my fish room completed, but you get the idea of some of the fish that can live happily together.

3 red irian rainbows
1 blue rainbow
7 clown loaches
12 albino bristlenose cat growouts
4 auratus pencilfish
trio painted swordtails (not dyed, just orange with black splotches)
trio pearl gouramis
female albino kribensis
2 true siamese algae eaters


In my 65, I have

20 smokey angel growouts
6 black ghost angel growouts
1 unknown pleco
8 harlequin rasboras
unknown number of male guppies
7 longfin blue leopard danios

The potential is endless.

[mrfryc]

I currently have tow 30G tanks. One has about 25 peaceful community fish, including some platies that keep reproducing, so I'll migrate some into the 75G tank. My other 30G has two haplo catfish, two parrot cichlids, a pleco that's pushing 9", and a horseface loach that reappears about once week (he was only $3 at PetSmart and is a good 3.5" long, I couldn't pass him up).

In regards to the last post, I tried clown loaches in the past, but they died shortly after. They were from PetSmart so that's why I assumed they died, however I later learned that they are very "fragile" fish (although I'm not totally unconvinced about the PetSmart theory either). For the 75G I was going to go for some botias, bc they're similar to clown loaches, but hardier (from my understanding) but I still have a place for clown loaches in my heart. Any clown loach suggestions?