A few questions before I start a tank.

[Splishy Splashy]

I was thinking about having black/gold/white skirt tetras, which are supposed to be easy enough to care for and good with corys. Would those be good? I have heard that ember tetras are very hard to find.

[talldutchie]

I wouldn,t, at least not in a 20 long.

What is available locally? And how hard is your water?

[Splishy Splashy]

There is a Petcetera, a PetSmart, and a Mr. Pets pretty close. My water is on the harder side, but I've never measured it.

[yankeefan]

A good thing to have on hand is a good water test kit. Any of your local stores should have them, I prefer API's master test kit, they can be a little pricey to start with but you'll get hundreds of useful tests from that kit.

As for your hard water, it probably has high PH also, but don't let that scare you away from Cories. I have high PH well water and my Cories are breeding and plenty happy.

Use this forum to learn all you can before you jump into a new tank and new fish. There is a ton of great info here and a little preparation will go a long, long way.

[talldutchie]

Harder water... livebearers is also an option then.

[~firefly~]

Guppies will thrive in hard water. Active, colourful fish that are easy to care for and will fit in with the cory cats. Just make sure you either have ALL males (no breeding) or more females than males (breeding) to stop any harrassment issues.

[Splishy Splashy]

Guppies seem like a very good idea. I know for a fact that both Petcetera and PetSmart have guppies, so I won't have the problem of going to the pet store and finding that they don't have the species of fish I'm looking for. If I were to have guppies and corys, how many corys and how many guppies would go in the tank?

Also, it sounds like I would be putting a lot of fish in the tank. How many fish should go into the tank first? I have heard that if you put too many fish in the tank at once, they will all die.

Thank you all for your help!

[Cermet]

For Corries you will need six to eight (better) for a school. For guppies, it matters little but you can stock to your tank's max for them. If you have mixed males and females, be sure to have a bare tank so the guppies eat most of the young. That way, you will not be over run by guppies.

The fish only die if the filter is uncycled - i.e. the bacteria that consumes fish waste hasn't grown (takes three to six weeks and requires a food source.) Read up on fishless cycling. Could do fish based cycling but again, read up on the issues (very large water chanes daily.)

[Splishy Splashy]

Okay, I will read about fishless cycling. I am figuring out the amount of guppies I should put in the tank using AqAdvisor, and it says I need to have females. I really don't want to have to deal with fry. Can I have only males, or do they kill each other?

[talldutchie]

See if a local shop happens to sell endlers, little less feisty. You can start with 3 -4 males. Get some amazon frogbit maybe, breaks up sightlines which helps a bit with the bickering and it's a great nitrate filter.