Schooling fish for Community Tank

A

Ashes

AC Members
Apr 19, 2001
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Northern NY
I've got a general purpose community tank (angels, corys, gouramis, small plecos, loaches) with a school of 6 hifin blackskirt tetras. I like having the schoolers in there because they add a little more "action," but I've had these guys for a few years and I know they're aging on me and will need to be replaced before too long.

Anyway, being the smart, plan-ahead fishkeeper that I am (yeah right!), I'm trying to decide what schooling fish to replace them with. I love these guys, but my tank isn't very colorful (the gouramis are a female dwarf and a pearl, the angels a silver and a marble) and I'd like to get something more colorful, but about the same size or smaller than the blackskirts.

I have some gold barbs in another tank and I thought about using them, but they seem to stay nearer to the bottom, and I'd rather have fish with a higher range. The top quarter of my aquarium is pretty empty, so the fish shouldn't have any territory issues.

My angels were both stunted as young ones (before I got them) and aren't very large. They don't seem to bother fish that are in schools.

Here are some ideas I'd had -
Hatchetfish (not that colorful, but interesting enough to make up for it)
Harlequin Rasboras

Or tetras:
Cardinals
Black neons
Bloodfins
Rummynoses
Glowlights
Head and tail lights
Bleeding hearts
Blue emperors

Any preferences among those? Or any other suggestions (has to be relatively easy to find)?

Thanks!
 
I was thinking zebra danios as well. I have seen them mentioned here several times, but never really knew what they looked like. They caught my eye today at the LFS and are pretty colorful and interesting :)
 
Giant danios shool are allways in motion like the top and have a nice colour pattern on them as they hit maturity.
Congo tetras but they get a bit big after a couple years.
BTW congo fetch a good price grown up.I get 20 each for nice males.
 
I have harlequin rasboras in my angel community tank and just love them. They are a really bright redish color and stay almost always near the top. THey are also a smaller schooling fish so you can get more, you could get 8 rasboras to replace your 6 black skirts. I have 8 and they are always schooling.
 
If you want really active (we'll call them uber-active), go with 4 or 5 rainbows. Mine are always moving, and the go nuts at feeding time.
 
I love threadfin rainbows but if I remember correctly they're pretty expensive around here.

Danios stay pretty small, don't they? I don't want to go with something that's too small, because as good as my angels are, I don't want to tempt them too much. How big do the giant danios get? I like them.

I like the look of congo tetras, but they're harder to find, and as was mentioned, pretty pricey, even the little ones.

I don't really care for the standard neon tetras. If I went with neons I'd go with cardinals (not too hard to find around here) or blacks.
 
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