# red eye tetra blues



## heidisue (May 3, 2006)

So after all that work my red-eyed tetras did cycling my tank, I come to find that they are very nippy fish indeed, not so community-oriented as one might think. They ate all my beloved cherry shrimp, too.

Not sure what to do now. The master plan, according to my daughter, was to house a school of neon tetras. I spoke with someone today who said that two schools in a 10g is not so smart and that neons are not sturdy and can be complicated (ie, tend to die right quick). 

What to do? Should I thank the tetras and give them back to the LFS? Switch to smaller fish? One school? One school and one larger roamer? Are two schools out of the question?

I also just fell in love with the guppies with the flouncy tails (poecilia reticulata). I'm willing to send every tetra on its way and just get a bunch of those. If anyone knows one larger fish who would enjoy their company, do tell.

After all this emphasis on plants and ferts and water and substrate, I think I'm ready to think about who is going to be living in this place. I want it to work out. Especially with the kid on the case.


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## [email protected] (May 12, 2005)

Oh red eye tetras are not a good choice for a planted tank at all, unfortunately. I would get rid of them in that tank for sure.


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## LITTLE_FISH (Sep 7, 2005)

> I spoke with someone today who said that two schools in a 10g is not so smart


Would that have been me?

Yeah, I still think that 2 schools of fish are too much for a 10G tank. I believe in having a school size of at least 6 fish, others may disagree with me there. But, given the minimum size of 6, you would have 12 fish (at least, not counting any algae eater, like Otos). There are at least 2 things wrong with that picture:

a) A heavy fish load in a high tech planted tank (and that is what you will have once you add the 30W of light to your fert and Excel routine) can cause more damage than you think, usually in form of algae as ammonia production from the fish may get larger than the plants can take up.

b) The beauty of a school is when they all come together and zoom through the tank as a group. When there are a lot of fish in a tank I found that this behavior is lost, at least from a visual perspective.Wherever they go there are already other fish.

I think that a 10G is more proper for one school of 6 smaller Tetras (or similar fish, like my favorite Harlequin rasbora espei  ), and maybe 2 or 3 Otos. But that may be only me

Hope this helps,

Ingo


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## JanS (Apr 14, 2004)

Yes, if they are a problem, I would take them back to the store.

If you like the Guppies, a nice little group of them should work fine in your tank. Of course you'll need to have a plan in place as for what to do with all of the babies you get from them.


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## heidisue (May 3, 2006)

*nice little group of guppies*

That's fantastic. Babies! The nicer LFS in town has agreed to adopt any babies and the 5-year-old partner in crime has been consulted. You can't really go wrong when you mention "rainbow gills" and "they might have babies."

Thanks for the tips - I was feeling wierd about giving the fish back but they are pretty aggressive and that wasn't what we set out to do with this particular tank.


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## heidisue (May 3, 2006)

oh, and yes, Little Fish, I was referring to when we spoke about schools at the LFS the other day. That was really helpful. Let me know when the Jersey fish folk get together again and I'll come hang out.


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