Need help stocking tank

i would suggest a school of 4 gourami maybe with a school of 4 Congo Tetras and maybe 2 pictus catfish. On the profile down below the pictus catfish is named Pimelodus pictus.

This site here is great for choosing fish:
http://badmanstropicalfish.com/profile.html#profile

Merged the thread from GFW with this one. Please confine your posts to one forum--if it needs moving, you can always request a mod help you out. OG

Have you cycled the tank? No point in adding cool fish if the tank won't support them.

While there are many fish that are commonly fed live foods (I'm guessing you mean guppies or gold fish by this), these food choices are not really adequate to the fishes nutritional needs, and should be avoided as a staple.

The 45 will limit you in many ways--most large predators will need a much larger tank. You could go with african butterfly fish--a dynamic, surface feeder that will thrive on a diet of crickets and small bugs, with the occassional feeder guppy. Other choices include smaller cichlids--I can't advice you on which ones would be suitable, however.

If you are willing to dedicate to the tank to a non-fish critter, crayfish are interesting, fairly easy to care for, and an active predator.

i would avoid crayfish, if only because it severely limits what you can put into a tank. mine currently is the only "real" inhabitant of a 10g, with only feeder guppies breeding away as the other occupants. however, the suggestion in another thread of a butterfly fish with a crayfish intriques me...and in a 45g, you could probably swing that. yet, just about all other fish would be potential victims for the crayfish. mine couldn't even live with zebra danios...picked em off one by one.

www.**************** seems to have a pretty good selection and some decent info on most of the fish they sell. They have pretty strict guidelines for what has to happen to get a refund if you were to get a dead fish/have a fish die soon after you got it though. Personally, I try to buy fish/aquarium supplies from local pet stores (well, there are only two left since Wal Mart took over the shopping scene, and I only trust one of them enough to buy fish from) and then go to a larger chain if I can't find what I want there. The benefits of this are, one, you actually can see and pick what you're buying, and two, these stores are (or can potentially be) a good resource to have around and doing business with them keeps them open. The money you have to pay to have fish shipped to you is a turn off as well, in my opinion. Anyway, that's just my opinion, and you know what they say about opinions As far as a recomendation for your tank, I'd have to suggest red tailed/rainbow shark. This is definitely my favorite fish, but you have to make sure you don't have any other fish that look like him/her because the red tail will constantly try to defend it's territory against it, especially if it's the same size or bigger. I haven't had any problem with agression towards fish of other types though. Mine even lets my cories swim through his home whenever they feel like

Unless you are willing to raise your own feeder fish I would advise not using them as food. Feeder goldfish and guppies from stores tend to be on the sickly side and could introduce parasites or infections into your tank. Buy a small 10 gallon and raise your own guppies if that is what you want to use for food. That way you know they are safe. But as was mentioned they should be a treat and not the staple everyday food source.

heelsfan, aren't there are couple decent shops in C-ville?

I honestly don't know. There is one that I've seen an ad for that I've been wanting to go check out, but I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head. Your best bet would probably be just to go check a few out and see if there are any you like. To me there are obvious signs to look for, such as dead fish. It's natural for there to maybe be a dead fish or two seeing that they are very stressed in stores and usually aren't given the best conditions to live in. But if you see a tank with five or six (as I have recently seen in a tank of small angelfish) or fish that look like they've been dead for days, I wouldn't buy anything there. Along the same lines are a lot of tanks marked "not for sale" with obviously sick fish. I also don't think that having a lot of fish that most people shouldn't have is a good sign, either. The same store with the dead angels also had a tank with six white sturgeon for sale a few months back. To me this is a sign they're more interested in selling anything just to make money than anything else. Yeah, the point in having a store is to make money, but if you're going to sell animals, you should at least care about them.