Setting up my second tank and looking for suggestions! :D

[mike_w101]

Hey everyone,

Haven't been on here in a while! Anyways, I've upgraded my set up pretty recently, and right now I have a 40 gallon freshwater tank with 4 Penguin Tetras, 2 Blind Cave Tetras, 2 Black Skirted Tetras, 1 Scissortail, 1 Rainbow shark, 2 Zebra Danios, a Dwarf Cory, 2 Banana Shrimp, 1 Vampire shrimp, and my juvenile turtle (3 or 4 inch shell diameter right now). Before people tell me my turtle will eat everyone else in the tank, let me say that they have lived together for a good number of months now (my turtle has always lived with fish) and my turtle hasnt harmed anything for a longggg time. He doesnt even try anymore, seems to have become rather used to just lounging around waiting to be fed by me instead :P.

Anyways, the point of this thread is that I also have a 10 gallon tank thats currently empty. I'd really like to start up another tank on the other side of my apartment in it, but im not sure what to put in it! I've been fishkeeping (and turtle keeping) for some time now, but I just can't make up my mind! I want to do something different with this 10 gallon from what I currently have, but aside from going with salt or brackish water, what could I do to have something different looking in this second tank? Any suggestions in terms of livestock? Also my current 40 gallon is not planted, has a few large fake plants, some driftwood at the bottom and small rocks as substrate (along with a few large rocks for decor).

[DrNic]

Given the size of the 10G tank you're somewhat limited on how many fish you can put in there. However there are a few options. First I would go HEAVILY planted. 10G tanks are great for heavy planting because it's easy and cheap to keep them brightly lit, and easy to trim down.

Assuming you have a heavily planted tank I would immediately go for a school of neon/cardinal tetras. I've always been a huge fan of those fish. Depending on how many tetras you use you might be able to get away with a single centerpiece fish like a dwarf gourami but it's not really necessary for a 10G setup as it will reduce the size of the tetra school.

Another way to go is with a single brightly colored betta, and a school of corries. Corries are great to watch in schools and a betta in a 10G tank can get pretty sizable.

Lastly you might consider a livebearer tank. Planted with lots of java moss for the fry to hide/nibble on livebearer tanks are always fun to watch as they generate fry pretty regularly. Platties/mollies are pretty hearty which is also nice. From my experience though, if you go with fancy guppies you might want to try to find some that are 'true breeding'. When I setup a 20G guppy tank after about 8-12 months the progeny fry were all coming out grey due to the mixing of colors/patterns not working out well.

If you wanted to go away from fish you could considers african dwarf frogs, or hermit crabs as well.

Hope this helps!