29g

[knoids]

I would personally get some rummy nose tetras! I love those fish! (I think that Harlequin Rasboras look pretty ugly too)

EDIT: Your tank looks incredible!

[Lil' Swimz$]

Harlequins are ugly and annoying, I've learned. I'm giving them away and I got more cardinals, which are in quarantine.

Here's an update!

[bertie 83]

I love my harlequins, the red they give off is soo pretty

[Lil' Swimz$]

Sorry if I sounded rude. :/ They have gotten a bit orangier for me. They just don't really suit this tank.

Better picture

[FADE2BLACK_1973]

Looks awesome! I love cardinal tetras. More would bring them out.

[GSPicthus]

I love the planted tank it looks very nice. I am jealous of people with planted tanks. I always wanted one but don't have the patience or desire to do the work. So I will just enjoy looking at your and others like yours.

I always wanted to have a huge school of cardinal tetras. I think they are extremely beautiful and in large groups, even more.

I did that in my 75 gallon I had a huge cardinal school that took me a year to build up 1 case of ich and the medicine killed them all off in a week. It was beautiful while it lasted.

[RTR]

Good surface current and high CO2 need not be incompatible. So long as you do not have surface breaks (splashing and bubbling) you will still be able to keep CO2 levels up.

The layout is quite nice. It should develop very well.

Personally I would like the projections for the future better if it were to stay as a species tank. The Rasboras are far better schoolers than the cardinals or rummyhose in tanks that size. In mixed tanks at that size neither of the Tetras will school well at all. But that is definitely a personal choice item.

[Lil' Swimz$]

Thank you everyone =3

RTR, gotchya. So you think harlequins? Hmmm.......... I'll see what the cardinals look like by themselves (there'd be 9) for awhile and go from there. Since I already got 5 more but they're in quarantine.

[bertie 83]

You did not sound rude at all, we all like different things, I am also jealous of your great plant skills

[RTR]

Don't get me wrong - Cardinals are among my favorite Tetras. Their coloring is spectacular, but as is the case with many smallish tetras, their schooling is weak. Once settled in and acclimated, they rarely school well. They do not feel threatened in species tanks, so only hang together is there is an artificial "threat" landscaped/aquascaped into their tank.

Anano's technique for fish in this subgroup is instructive. He puts a large school into a very large tank and has tallish plants only at the extreme ends if at all. A number of his early "Plains" or "Mountaintop: designs fit this scheme. These designs offer gently rolling contours of low to very low green over much of the length of the tank, offering no real cover for a large school of relatively small fish. If there are tall plants at the end(s), one or both, the fish will school while swimming the length of the tank and may break up a bit in the taller "forest egde" of the end(s) of the tank, but then will re-form for the return sprint across the "open to the sky" area which is most of the tank's length. The mountaintop tanks lack the end tall plant, but may lose some of the school among the standing stones of the very top of the mountain, off-center in the tank, if they provide too much shelter, but they will still reform for tank-length swims if there is good current running one direction along the front glass and the opposite along the rear glass. But this only works well in tank four to six feet long. In shorter tank, there is not enough space for the fish to form a coherent school. Neons actually may school a bit better just from being a bit smaller, but I admit that I prefer the more colorful cardinals. If you have relatively soft acid water, the neon school should last an average of ~10 years; the cardinal a couple of years less. In alkaline moderately hard water they may last a year or more less in age. Either tank is worth setting for a really striking tank showing what schooling really is, but it will need regular upkeep on the "carpet" plants and glass cleaning, but is actually easier than most multiple species heavily planted tanks.

Rasboras are much tighter-schooling fish. Obviously the harlequins are ideal for shoter (in length/width) tanks. They even smaller Rasboras may well be better, but tend to be much more demanding on water profile and quality. The will school well down to 30" tanks, but obviously 36" or larger is more showy. The really tiny Rasboras will school well down to 24" tanks, but are IME very demanding fish to keep.

So, "threatening" with open spaces can promote schooling, but the threat needs to be toothless and fit their inherited tendency to school tighter is open spaces or when predators are around. Obviously co-housing with a predator is a no-no. Any sufficiently large fish could be tempted to eat Neons, and would distort the apparent scale of the design.

Barbs are pretty good schoolers. Tiger Barbs among the best. They will school in smallish tanks, but the overlap of fish in both directions gets a bit chaotic. For some reason I burn out on Tiger Barb schools after about 3 years. I think that they may just be too exhausting to watch. I once had the Executive VP of a firm I was working for over - she said that I obviously did not sit and watch that 55 gallon Tiger tank for relaxation. I told her that in practice I could fall asleep in front of that tank faster than any other, as it was just fast repetition with few significant changes, so was in that hypnotic and stupefying rather than fascinating. But then, she already knew that I was just a bit crazy.

HTH

[Lil' Swimz$]

Ah that makes alot of sense.... Unfortunately this tank broke (a seam came loose on the bottom) about 5 months ago! LOL It woke me up at 5:00am. I salvaged everything but unfortunately the fish did not survive the ordeal.

Here was the last taken picture of it before it ruptured.

The same day I set up 20 gallon long. Here is a picture of it today! (I did a dry start method, there's no water in it) I'm filling it up right now!

[RTR]

The old tank looked good before it went down. There is no reason why the new one should not develop as well. God luck with it.

[defool89]

I got some new ideas from this thanks. Looked like a magazine shoot

[Lil' Swimz$]

And it's filled! Wish me luck! LOL The second image shows how well the plants grew and filled in during the two Dry Start!

[Lil' Swimz$]

Here is the 20 gallon much more established! In the tank are 16x Black Neon tetras 3x Cherry barbs (all female unfortunately at the moment) 3 otos and a pair of Pygmy Gouramis. They are all doing great and I love every one of them! I am looking into adding another 14 black neons and 15 glowlights, maybe tomorrow actually!