# 40 Gallon Help



## deeporl (Jan 1, 2006)

Ok I recently upgraded from my 40 gallon long(some call it a breeder I believe) saltwater tank to a 150 gall plexi setup. So now I have a 40 gallon long tank and I was thinking boy I use to love the freshwater fish. So I want to convert my 40 long into a freshwater tank. Well unfourtantly when I did freshwater it was a crude guesstimation time in my life. I didn't study up much and what not. Well after dealing with the salties I've decided before I did anymore I'd check in with you guys to see what I should have as far as fish/equipment and so on and so forth. See what is fact and fiction if you will. I know there are so many choices out there that it would be near impossible for you guys to start from scratch with me so I'm gonna go ahead and tell you what I was thinking of doing and get your input on it. I'll link things to live aquaria so you can look at technical specs. I picked that site because its where I get all my salty stuff. If there is a better place to buy let me know. Chances are I'll end up getting what I can locally. But linking to a description page on the product is a heck of a lot easier than posting specs on everything.

Equipment:
40 gallon tank (approx 48X12X17)
Penguin BIO-Wheel Power Filter 350
48" Flexible Bubble Wand
Azoo Air Pump 6500
Fish Mate
Visi-Therm Deluxe Heater 200
1 55oz bag of First Layer Pure Laterite 
1 25lb bag of Natural Gravel Shallow Creek Regular
Various Artificial Plants (may move to real ones later on)
I have a PC lighting system that was on there for my corals. It puts out quite a bit of light. 220 watts if I'm not mistaken. I have 2 acintic blue lights plus 2 10,000K daylight bulbs in there right now. It creates a morning, afternoon, evening, and night cycle with moon lights at night. It works great on coral in that tank but I fear it may be too much for freshies but I don't really know. Thought?
Also do freshies need water circulation pumps? If so brand and gph suggestions?

Livestock:
I'm thinking mainly livebearers that are peaceful here are 
my thoughts you plug numbers in please
Mollies
Platies
Guppies
Swordtails
Neon Tetras
Maybe some dwarf graumies
Pleco.
Mix and match and play with numbers and give me your thought.

Food:
I have no clue here so help me out. Mix it up or pick one food. Let me know


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## Lydia (Feb 6, 2005)

8 neons
3 mollies
3 swordtails
2 guppies
3 platies
1 dwarf gourami
1 rubberlip or bristlenose pleco (if you get either of these plecos you would need to get a piece of driftwood for it to suck on)

FW fish do not need a circulation pump. I'm not sure about the lighting, but I think that is too high lighting for a FW tank.

Welcome to FishForums, by the way!


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## micstarz (Oct 22, 2005)

don't ask me about your equiptment but

If you really wanted to go livebearers then:

mollies (get lots of varieties!)
Platies (get calicos!)
Swordtails (get some small males)
Pleco
~Endlers- they're nice, but they dont go well with swords
you could have a pearl gourami

I personally think black skirt tetras fit in better with livebearers 

Get some cories!
A wood shrimp is cool, and you could add some ghost shrimp. If their are some plants, get some cherry shrimp.

Well foods, you could feed flake regularly, put in some worms every other day, and when you get bored of saving all your fry, their parents will clean 'em up. 
If you like the fry, you could feed them daphnia.
You miight wanna feed color enchancing flakes.

If you just couldnt bother taking all the fry out, get some java fern/moss.

Also, put twice as much females as males, to reduce stress.


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## micstarz (Oct 22, 2005)

or you could get a guppy only tank with some cories at the bottom.


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## Damon (Jan 18, 2005)

Thats way too much light even for a planted tank. With no live plants, just run 1 10000K bulb for 8 hrs. Mixing livebearers can result in crossbreeding which you may not want. You will also have many babies going with livebearers.


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## Lexus (Jan 19, 2005)

Id pick one or two species of fish and stick with it. Like 10 platies and 6 cories and an algae eater. But with any livebearer they are gonna reproduce like crazy so maybe you should start with 1m/3f and wait for the babies to grow up. Or if you dont want babies do an all male guppy tank that would be pretty.


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## Lydia (Feb 6, 2005)

In my experience, a lot of the babies get eaten anyways. Also, if they do grow up and you get overstocked, you can usually get rid of them somehow, like trading them for credit at the LFS or shipping them to someone or something like that.


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## deeporl (Jan 1, 2006)

Any suggestions for other types of fish? List your favorite combo's please for that size tank.


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## honmol (Jan 2, 2006)

If you just get 1 male and 2 female livebearers your tank will fill up in no time.


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## Lydia (Feb 6, 2005)

Well,

I would put:
1 blue spot gourami
6 rummy-nose tetras
6 gold barbs
4 otos
5 peppered cories
2 black mollies

Or:
5 pygmy cories
3 otos
6 hatchets
4 boseman's rainbowfish
4 neon dwarf rainbowfish
1 apple snail
10 ghost shrimp just for the fun of it

Or:
4 zebra danios
4 leapord danios
1 neon dwarf gourami
4 cories
3 otos
4 gold barbs

I'm sorry but I don't have the time right now to make sure these could all do fine in the same water parameters but I'm pretty sure they would be fine as long as they were acclimated slowly.

Food: I would buy two different kinds of flake food and mix them together, get some sinking pellets for the bottom feeders, get some algea wafers for the otos, and get some kind of community diet frozen food.


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## micstarz (Oct 22, 2005)

I would say a really nice setup would be a heavily planted tank with cories a betta and lots of endlers and gambusia.


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