75 gallon setup - what would you do?

[teqvet]

skip to bottom to avoid the text wall - I went further in detail than I planned.

Long story short: I had a great tank setup originally that had a mixture of escondido carpintis, green terror, various plecs, a peacock eel, and some botia striata. many said the tank would end in death because of the aggressive fish. I kept the tank for 8 months with never an accident and all my fish out all the time acting as if they were showing off. It was a great community. My escondido and green terror had gotten to 8" and 7" respectively and all my loaches and plecs were 'plump' and happy.. usually resting on the rocks underneath the eheim spray bars and sitting directly under the currents.

My wife and I took our daughters on vacation, and made plans to have all of our pets taken care of. her father was supposed to handle it but mid vacation I found out her brother in law was the one doing the care taking. Huge red flags for me but nothing I could do at the time.. I was already gone. I left directions to the detail one when, how, and how much to feed and adjust things accordingly. it was so descript my 6 year old knew what needed to be done.

We come home from vacation and I find almost the entire bag (brand new bag) of food dumped in to the tank. Several of the fish were already dead and floating and you could tell it'd been like that for awhile as the food was very soggy and broken a part but not because it had been eaten. It has just disintegrated over time in the water. I lost hundreds of dollars of fish. her brother is no longer allowed around our house or near our kids (long story but the whole house was wrecked and he had the nerve to attack us and claim we were lying and making things up when we found another womans clothes in our house and they weren't my wife's!!!))


Ok, so I really said more than I intended but I just wanted to give an idea of where I am coming from. I had a LOT of time invested in to my fish and I loved them incredibly. I'd sit at the tank (in our bedroom) and rock our youngest to sleep. I'd sit there for 2 hours every night just watchin them. After this incident, I was so sick to my stomach I wanted to break the thing down and sale it. I've had it listed for the last 2 weeks at a steal of a price (less than a 1/4 of what you would pay for everything that comes with it) just to get it out of the house. I was cleaning it up pretty good today and sat and looked at it. After a bunch of no-shows from folks who feigned interest in the tank I started wondering what I could put in it if I kept the tank.

This brings me to cory cats. Our first tank we got about 2 years ago now and it was a 29gallon. it has my first 3 cory cats in it which are julii's or trili's (not sure honestly). They're going on 2 years of age now and are still the coolest things I've ever seen. they survived a tank burst when the original 29gallon had the back blow out. Petsmart refunded me/replaced the tank and they've been in the current tank for a long time now.


the really tl;dr version:
Regarding the 75 gallon, how many corys would be ideal to have for a school, and how many different schools could be done? Also what other fish would be ideal to house with them? Top fish would be a necessity I would imagine? The tank has 3m colorquartz black sand that is s-grade. it's almost finer than sand honestly. I also have a-lot- of driftwood and a good bit of river rock as well. Suggestions would be grand or tank pics of similar ideas that you have.

[Suckermouth]

I'm not big into corys, but I have a few... You could keep quite a few Corydoras in there. As far as upper fish go, being on a catfish forum, I'm sure quite a few of us are going to say no, you don't need any if you don't want any; of course, this means that some of our tanks look virtually empty, especially during the daytime...

I do know that some of the small Cory species such as C. pygmaeus will swim midwater, so that could provide a good contrast to some of the other corys.

Your corys were almost definitely trilineatus. Corys sold as julii are almost never that species and almost always trilineatus.

You can keep corys with pretty much anything that's not going to eat them or rip them to shreds. Corys are fairly peaceful so they make good tankmates for a variety of types of fish.

[teqvet]

Thanks for the info. I know a little bit about corys -that they are quite the mellow species and in general keep to themselves. I was hoping to get an idea of those who do keep a mixed setup, what they have found looks good. I was thinking about some rainbows of some sort, or maybe even a school or two of tetras. I don't NEED upper level fish but I would like it. I enjoy a colorful tank during the day as much as I enjoy watching a busy shoal of cats at night with the lunar lights on.

[Birger]

Something interesting to look for would be some

Brachyrhamdia

which are considered cory mimics...these have come up lately in posts and is something that would make for an interesting tank if combined with a similar corydoras sp., would be interesting to see the interaction.

I would not be against the mentioned tetra's always look good in a nice school.

[MatsP]

A 75 gallon tank will hold a large number of corys. I'd probably try to get some of the larger variants, perhaps one of the Brochis species.

And yes, tetras work well with cories in a larger tank.

--
Mats

[Richard B]

If you want some other fish to accompany the corys, i'd suggest hatchetfish & pencilfish, the former for interest & a true surface dweller & the latter for colour - both a really nice choice

[AndiH]

I have a betta and 2 gourami with my cories and the mix works well as far as spacing height wise. The cories dont bother they others and they don't bother the cories. Of course with bettas its always a fish-by-fish basis.

[DJ-don]

if u want a nice community tank, i would take everybones advice that is given so far. but if u want something interstin perhaps getting an oscar. i have a friend hu has 6 oscars in 3 dif, 110 gallon tanks and 1 in a 75 gallon tank. she's also managed to breed them too.
they are beautiful fish to keep. i know im ranting about a non Catfish fish, but i reall do reccomend it. iahve 1 oscar and i love him (oscars by the way can only be in a 75 gallon+ tanks)

[andywoolloo]

A 75 could fit a nice amount of syno lucipinnis. Could you imagine them whizzing around rocks and doing circuits around deco?

Nice.

But that's not really community like you're looking for I'm just imaging how nice it would be to see alot of them all together.
And I quite like species only tanks.