Advice for stocking - 215L

[rineay]

Hi all,

Long-time lurker, first time poster

I started my first tropical tank about a year ago, it's an AquaOne AR980 which I'm running with Aqua One Aquis CF1000 Canister Filter. There’s substrate and two large pieces of driftwood, and I have Java Moss, and several Java Ferns & Anubias’ growing, plus looking to add more plants to the substrate since I haven’t killed these ones (yay). I’ve had two Blood Parrot Cichlids in there for about nine months, and I added a long-finned bristlenose about 4 months ago – everything is going great with one exception – the two cichlids are incredibly flighty and it’s quite frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, I love the little guys, but it would be nice to look at the tank and actually see some fish…they’ll come out of their little hidey holes for food, and that’s it – any sudden movements and they’re right back in there.

SO, I’ve been doing some reading and it appears that the best option would be to add some ‘dither-fish’. There are two positives to this – 1) they hang around in the middle of the tank and let the parrots know that everything is cool and they can come out, 2) it will look like I actually have fish in there.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I’ve seen a tank at Hollywood in Albany with 5 Parrots in there and they were a lot more chilled out even though there were hardly any hiding spots. I would say I have enough hiding spots that they should feel relatively secure.

I’ve been looking at appropriate fish and I was thinking a school of 5-6 of either a mid-sized tetra (congo maybe), or maybe some Black Ruby Barbs. The tetras are more chilled, but the barbs are more likely to be a bit more outgoing – and from what I’ve read they’re one of the more relaxed of the barbs. What do you think?

Now that I’ve decided to stock more than just the Parrots I wouldn’t mind getting a few different species, but I don’t want to overstock the tank – the parrots are pretty small right now, but I’m aware they’ll grow quite a bit in the next few years.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing any advice

[vwboy77]

I found with the parrot I had when it was young it was like your's. I feed it blood worms once or twice a week by hand and then every time I went to the tank it was up at the glass wanting food. Also if you get other fish remember that anything that will fit in its mouth will become food. You could try getting more cover from tall plants like a tiger lotus and give them a few caves to hid in which mite make them feel safer and then not so jumpy

[rineay]

Hello

Thanks for the reply. RE - fits in mouth = food, that's why I was looking at the barbs or mediumish sized tetras instead of the smaller ones like neons What size did your parrot get up to? Did you have many other fish in the aquarium?

I like the idea of the tiger lotus - it looks like a nice plant, I'll have to keep an eye out on trade me. I was also looking at something like ambulia to help fill out the background and provide a bit more cover. This is my first planted tank so I was waiting to make sure I wouldn't kill my easy-care plants before I got any that needed to be planted in the substrate.

The idea of caves is a good one too - I might look at getting some more rocks and trying to set up some more hiding places. I was hoping to avoid this as I finally got the tank looking not-horrible...aquascaping is a lot harder than it looks...