75 gallon community Apistos or German Rams?

[ue222]

Hello,

I'm setting up a 75 gallon tank for community not breeding, trying to decide between German Blue Rams or Apistos (caucatoides, hongsloi, or agassizii) for my 75 gallon tank. I want other compatible fish for a community planted tank but no others have been decided yet. What will take advantage of the space best, a group of GBR or some combination of those Apistos. Im leaning GBR for 75 gallon as I had Macmasteri and Hongsloi before I moved (and I also have a separate 29 gal for either 1 Kribensis pair or 1 Apisto pair).

Thank you

 

[anewbie]

I think the bigger issue is the other stocking as GBR will prefer 82+ temps and the mentioned species of apisto are going to want 76-78; so i would decide what else you wish to keep. Also i find that too many male dwarf cichild in a small aquarium really don't get along that well. Last but least a 75 has decent height and width which is better taken advantage of by larger fishes - some of the mid size (5ish inch) cichild or larger. Otherwise you have a tall tank and find it more difficult to fill in the layers (top, middle and lower region).

 

[ue222]

Feel free to give me other stocking ideas to take better advantage of the space, I like EBJD and EBAs as far as bigger SA goes. I was going to go Mbuna but I’d have to buffer my tap water like crazy so highly leaning SA. I just always really liked rams and can meet their temperature requirements easier in my new home, so I figured I’d see how many I could have and go from there but I’m all ears since I’ve never had a tank this big.

 

[ue222]

For other stocking for GBR I’ve heard Sterbai Cory (and potentially Pandas but I like Sterbai), Cardinal tetra, probably a few other tetra out there. Hard to think of anything for the top layer you’re right. Don’t know if any killis are good at those temps?

 

[anewbie]

cory panda is a cold water fish unless you mean some other panda as there are at least a dozen different species refer to as panda. Cardinals are fine they will be mid/lower level. Most of the top level small fishes are going to prefer colder waters. I'm not going to comment on the man made eba. Jack Dempsey are a ca fish so likely prefer harder water but you will have to double check. Sounds like you just want colourful fishes - you could do a group of 6 yoyo loaches in the lower part and i guess if you are going to have eba - 2 will be ok - the mid level you could go with serpae tetra (or similar); though they are going to want a lot of plants or cardinals - larger eba might attempt to snack on the cardinals so something to consider. For the top you could try black neon tetra. There are of course 100s of other combinations so it would take too many key strokes to list them all.

 

[Mike Wise]

I guess that this is true for any good community aquarium: pick the species that you most want and then choose other species that live in similar conditions. Only you can decide.

 

[ue222]

cory panda is a cold water fish unless you mean some other panda as there are at least a dozen different species refer to as panda. Cardinals are fine they will be mid/lower level. Most of the top level small fishes are going to prefer colder waters. I'm not going to comment on the man made eba. Jack Dempsey are a ca fish so likely prefer harder water but you will have to double check. Sounds like you just want colourful fishes - you could do a group of 6 yoyo loaches in the lower part and i guess if you are going to have eba - 2 will be ok - the mid level you could go with serpae tetra (or similar); though they are going to want a lot of plants or cardinals - larger eba might attempt to snack on the cardinals so something to consider. For the top you could try black neon tetra. There are of course 100s of other combinations so it would take too many key strokes to list them all.

All great stuff. Colorful is nice but behavior and compatibility matters just as much. I have never personally had black neons so didn’t know they like more top level than like a cardinal tetra. Probably won’t go with the EBA, also seeing EBJD just not a good match forgive me as they have never been fish I’ve looked deep into compared to the smaller fish never had a tank that would fit them. Let me think it over for a moment.