Fish Tank for Waiting Room

bradlgt21

bradlgt21

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May 9, 2009
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Chicagoland, Illinois
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Brad
My sister is a Chiropractor and is opening up her own practice in February. They are building out the space now and I recently upgraded my 29 gallon tank to a 55 gallon tank. I offered her my old tank for the waiting room and she wanted it. Now I was thinking what kind of fish do you do in a waiting room? I have a coralife light for it that ran it as low tech when I had it so it will be planted.

I need fish that have personalities and aren't shy because there will likely be loud kids in the waiting room. She treats a lot of kids but kids love fish. I was thinking a school or smaller rainbowfish like Dwarf Neon Blue Rainbowfish. And then a school of cory's. I want to have a lot of options to give her though so any other suggestions? Again it will be a planted 29 gallon. Water here is like 7.8 ph with harder end water. I have a lot of african cichlid breeders locally as well as a rainbowfish guy and cory breeders.
 
You could do Bettas with a school or danios or something. One male as a centerpiece with the school, or you could do a "sorority" tank with a couple of females. My female has a TON of personality and charges the vacuum when I clean my room haha.
 
Go with larger fish that can easily be seen. Bettas certainly have personalities, but their tiny eyes and expressions are not as visible as those of barbs, which would be my choice :) Odessa, rosy, and gold barbs are very colorful and not aggressive. Tiger barbs are considered aggressive, but provided they are given the schools they require and don't have long finned fish living alongside them, I've never known them to deserve their notorious nippy reputation.

I would say do an all barb tank, with maybe some cories on the bottom. Try to keep at least a dozen cories, I really like the combination of peppered and bronze. An easy and hardy tank, too. Rainbowfish are hardy also, but I wouldn't say they're bulletproof. Barbs seem to take all sorts of neglect - while I hope this won't be the case at the office, you just never know!

Provided the office is kept climate controlled, you wouldn't even need a heater, since all these fish don't mind a little cooler temps.
 
Well it's a block from my work so I would likely be going over every once in a while to do the maintenance so it shouldn't get to bad. I will look into barbs.

Bettas scare me, I had a male betta who hated everything. He even killed the snails I put in his tank. I would hate for her to develop aggression in her tank. I learned that the hard way when I got the 29 years ago I put 3 gourami in the tank. Bad idea.
 
Trichogaster gouramis definitely need a 4 foot tank to keep multiple conspecifics, in my opinion. The exception might be perhaps pearl gouramis, which are beautiful and peaceful - actually not a bad idea to get a pair for the top :) They are easily sexable by their fins. Pearl gouramis on the top, barbs in the middle and cories on the bottom would fill the tank out really nicely.
 
I do like pearls. I would think rosy barbs would be to big to fit in a 29 as a school. They say they can get to 6". If I would go this route i would probably do a single pearl gourami 6 cherry barbs and a half dozen cories. I kind of like that idea, but I don't know about the gourami enjoying kids tapping on the glass they seem to shy at noises and stress out easy.
 
I'd put in good old Guppies... Constant action, babies, and colors. Kids love them. They also do very well in a planted tank. I'd pick two strains and hybridize them in the tank. If they are generally similar you can get some pretty nice fish from it and you don't get issues with recessive alleles for a few generations. I've seen a Gourami survive for a long time in a waiting room tank before. They just had some good hiding spots for it when the kids got to be too much. He kind of gave a fishy sigh when a kid came up to the tank and meandered behind some cover. I've kept guppies with a male betta without any issues before. The betta got agressive but the guppies just sped away leaving it in the dust. Never had any any damaged fish. A few missing babies though. I imagine a larger Gourami would be the same. Since your going planted also include some Malaysian Trumpet Snails to help with any minor algae issues. Kids also like these guys.
 
What helps a lot to keep them comfortable is floating plants. Unfortunately floaters can be difficult to manage, growing out of control and blocking light to the lower plants. However if you kept easy, low light plants on the bottom (mosses, Crypts, bolbitis are a combo I use frequently) then floaters could fit in nicely, especially Amazon frogbit which is less aggressive in its spread.

Rosies have never gotten that big for me, it seems to me they are smaller these days than they were back in the early days of mainstream fish keeping. Still, gold barbs, and if you can find them, black ruby and odessa barbs, are very striking. Cherry barbs are nice but in my opinion, kind of boring...they don't school, but the males especially are a lovely eye popping color. I just don't find their activity to be very entertaining, especially not in a tall, larger tank. I liked them best when I had them in a 20 long alongside neons.
 
gouramis might be too shy, loud noises really scare them, and lots of movement in front of the tank too (just my thougts of course :) )

My first thought is neons and corys :)
but someone said their faces might be too small (I skimmed, that may not have been quite it lol), so barbs
So with that I would say barbs ,cories, maybe some platies? or mollys

Bettas are gorgeous, but I know from accident large noises scare them too
 
I was thinking of adding some nerite snails and amano shrimp to the mix to keep the plants clean.

I must admit I started this thread to try to get other opinions other than my own because I am biased. My 55 gallon has rainbowfish, syno petricola, amano shrimp, nerite snails and a BN pleco. Hency why I like the idea of all these but at the same time don't want to just duplicate my tank.

I thought about guppies I do actually have a local guy that breeds them, not fish store quality we are talking bred wild caught and they are amazing. If I did these instead of rainbowfish I could probably get away with cherry shrimp instead of amanos so then you would have the whole babies thing with them.
 
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