Tank Setup Suggestions?
- Thread starter Ainsley
- Start date
Tank: Go as big as possible, some of the most beautiful amazonian fish (angels, discus, flag cichlids etc) are fairly sizeable fish.
Substrate: Depends on your preferences, but most people tend to go with a pale sandy substrate with areas of leaf litter (boiled oak leaves work) scattered about, with pieces of rootwood and rounded pebbles forming decor.
Plants: Depends on what you want to keep and how strict a biotope you want the tank. The most obvious is amazon swords of some variety, but note that fish such as discus and flag cichlids are generally found in fairly low vegetated areas. Others include brazillian milfoil, brazilian pennywort, brazilian frogbit (a floating plant), a lily of some description (not the lotus types, but you'd have to search quite hard to find one from the amazon as most available in the hobby are from south-east asia, believe me I've tried!).
Fish: The possibilities are endless, afterall the amazon holds a great proportion of the world's fish, but I'm guessing from your provisional tank size you won't want them huge. Pretty much any type of tetra, apart from those from africa (congo tetras etc) and very northern south america, various apistogramma species, flag cichlids would work well, several of the corydoras species (but again this is a diverse group of fish that spans a wide area across south america and various islands), you could probably get away with a couple of angels in there, smaller pleco species such as bristlenose, rubberlip, clown etc, some smaller armoured catfish, I could go on forever, literally. It's all down to what you personally want to see in your tank.
Inverts: Honestly, the only area I can't be entirely sure on! A lot of the inverts sold in the hobby are from asia and africa, someone might be able to help more with this.
Anyway I hope that's helped - I have big plans for an amazon biotope when I have funds and I've already started collecting pieces of wood etc. Fishbase is always good for finding out which fish come from where. Keep us updated
Substrate: Depends on your preferences, but most people tend to go with a pale sandy substrate with areas of leaf litter (boiled oak leaves work) scattered about, with pieces of rootwood and rounded pebbles forming decor.
Plants: Depends on what you want to keep and how strict a biotope you want the tank. The most obvious is amazon swords of some variety, but note that fish such as discus and flag cichlids are generally found in fairly low vegetated areas. Others include brazillian milfoil, brazilian pennywort, brazilian frogbit (a floating plant), a lily of some description (not the lotus types, but you'd have to search quite hard to find one from the amazon as most available in the hobby are from south-east asia, believe me I've tried!).
Fish: The possibilities are endless, afterall the amazon holds a great proportion of the world's fish, but I'm guessing from your provisional tank size you won't want them huge. Pretty much any type of tetra, apart from those from africa (congo tetras etc) and very northern south america, various apistogramma species, flag cichlids would work well, several of the corydoras species (but again this is a diverse group of fish that spans a wide area across south america and various islands), you could probably get away with a couple of angels in there, smaller pleco species such as bristlenose, rubberlip, clown etc, some smaller armoured catfish, I could go on forever, literally. It's all down to what you personally want to see in your tank.
Inverts: Honestly, the only area I can't be entirely sure on! A lot of the inverts sold in the hobby are from asia and africa, someone might be able to help more with this.
Anyway I hope that's helped - I have big plans for an amazon biotope when I have funds and I've already started collecting pieces of wood etc. Fishbase is always good for finding out which fish come from where. Keep us updated
Right now I have a 20 gallon with 3 serpae tetras and a little neon I want to move into a larger tank. I also have a striped raphael catfish I need to move into a larger tank before he outgrows the small one... Other than that, I think I'm going to go with mostly tetras and a few catfish of some sort... Thanks for all the help!