Fish for 10G tank

Harlequin rasboras are an attractive, fairly small, and fairly active schooling fish. They also seem to be a bit more hardy than neon tetras IME. You might try 5 or 6 with perhaps a dwarf gourami as a slower moving fish, and a couple of small cory's for clean-up.

Cories are entertaining little fish and good cleaners for the bottom of the tank. They will eat the food the rest of the fish don't catch. They will not, however, clean the algae out of your tank.

Amano's will do both and contribute very little to the bioload. They don't have a lot of personality however. It is totally feasable to have both.

Tom

Originally posted by gersheff
tom, do you have any other ideas?

I hope i can safely assume that a few small cory's mean 2-3.

do these fish require a lot of plants, rocks? anything else?

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I have tons of ideas! A lot of them aren't any good though

Cories like groups of their own. the more there are the more comfortable they feel in the tank. With most cories I would say three is your minimum number. The good thing about cories is that there are a bunch of different kinds but they all get along. So, you could get a panda cory and a peppered cory and an emerald cory and they'll be happy. Personally I love panda cories. I like their coloring and for a small tank they work well as they stay fairly small.

Cories root around in the substrate all the time so they require a small sized gravel so as not to hurt the barbells around their mouths. If you have a sand substrate they'll love it but its not necessary. Other than that they don't really require anything real special.

I do like the idea of harlequin rasboras they're a good looking fish with some color. I would also pick 3-4 panda cories and then maybe a betta. Now, I'm not positive whether or not a betta would get along with the rasboras but he should do fine with the cories (I have one in a tank with 4 pandas). Outside of a few amano shrimp I would leave it at that.

Bettas come in a wide variety of colors, won't hide, and have a lot of personality. They will fight any other male bettas or any fish they might mistake for a betta to death but with fish like cories and rasboras you should be okay. I would introduce the betta last to the tank. That way the fish with the most potential for aggression is entering the tank as a newcomer rather than the other fish being introduced into "his" tank.

I would advise you to take a trip to the LFS too to see what the have. It might give you some new ideas.

Tom

I was considering suggesting a betta, but (a) I've never had one, and (b) I figured a gourami was "probably" a little safer bet in a community tank. Make sure if you go with the betta that you have live rather than plastic plants, as plastic plants can do a job on their fins.

I currently have 5 rasboras and 3 cories. Lost my black mollie last week.

You "could" go without any cories or shrimp and just get a few more rasboras. Just be very careful about not overfeeding, and be religious about water changes. After all, scraping algae and gravel vac'ing a 10g doesn't take but a few minutes anyway. But, cories are indeed a cute family of fish. I'd take a good look at your lfs and go with what you find more attractive.

Gourami and Betta are both labyrinth fish and individuals of either species "can" be territorial. So, in a 10 gallon tank, where the won't be a whole lot of space that either one can call its own, you're probably better off not getting one of each. You might get away with it if you go with a female betta. Not quite as striking as the male, but a bit less prone to aggression.

I kept a dwarf gourami and a male betta in my 29 gallon and had no issues... and they both tended to hang out in the same corner of the tank (away from the filter output). Then the gourami caught some type of fungus (puffy cottony type stuff) and didn't make it.

I bought another gourami and he and my betta went at it from the minute I put him in the tank - in the plastic bag! It was quite amusing to watch (the betta got a good workout, the 15 minutes the gourami was in the tank he was all puffed up), but if I had released the gourami I'm sure there would have been a blood bath... so I took the gourami straight back to the store and ended up getting something totally different - a pleco.

So I think it really depends on the individual fish. Just like people - personalities and who you get along with varies!!

~Tara