15 Gal Rimless Non-Betta Tank

[TharBePirates]

I really like the size of this tank. I mean, I really like the size of a 50 gallon more, however, this is a nice size for a smaller tank.

It was mainly a shrimp farm for the longest time with fire reds, tigers, and then an assortment of very cuddly corydoras with pitbull plecos. However I sold off my corys and ended up winning a pair of Pseudomungil Gertrudae Aru iis at auction. As awesome as they are, the female is very good at hunting all my baby shrimp. So, I decided to rescape and turn it into a community tank, no longer caring about the fate of the baby shrimp.

So far I have in the tank

- My previous breeding pair of Aru iis
- My Pitbull Pelco I already had
- 1 Dwarf Neon Gourami who is very upset at the other gourami on the other side of the glass
- 11 Ember Tetras (fed them earthworm flake, now they really glow like embers)
- 40 odd shrimp that keep the food scraps clean

I'm hoping to add-
- 4 more Arus since they like numbers
- 3 scarlet badis (a male and 2 females)

I know the Pittie Pelco is supposed to like numbers but I've had mine with other Pitties before and she. Did. Not. Like. Them. At. All. All by her lonesome she's actually out and about with the other fish and very active (she eats with them), so I'm just going to let her be the lone pelco.

I know that sounds like an awful lot of fish for a 15 however I'm running a big ehiem canister on it and the tank is set up as moderately planted with room for more plant growth. Also, lots of driftwood. You'll see in my pics that to the right is a big formation of manzanita, moss and ferns. They can hide underneath that entire thing if they want (and when I had cories, they did). To the left is a scrape wood pile of cholla wood, manzanita bits and pieces, and ferns. Both formations are on different sight lines and provide different sized hiding spaces. THe left side with the cholla wood will be expanded out in a few days with some more cholla and ferns. There's also dwarf sag and crypts, and I'm hoping to add stem plants in the back left. The tank is set up so there's a lot of turf for everyone.

Embers are redder now since the pic. Gourami is doing his lurking think in the java ferns. Bottom pic is my fire reds and tigers.

[fishy friend2]

You might have a bit more luck in fishforums.net, or tropicalfishkeeping.com

[Bombalurina]

I'm in same situation - heavily overstocked 15-ish gallon. :p

I'm not really familiar with Arus, but will adding extras upset the breeding pair?
I'd also be worried about aggression from the gourami to the badis.

That said, how cool are embers? I love mine. And I am so jealous of your tiger shrimp! I have red cherries and crystal reds.

[bettasusa]

those shrimp look really cool on that log. I'm assuming the red ones are the males?

[Bombalurina]

Actually, Bettasusa, with shrimp, the females are generally far more colourful than the males. I don't know if the same is true for fire shrimp, but I think it is.