PlanetCatfish.com

Hello everyone. After visiting this website, i've been inspired to try and work on a fishtank of my own.
I've decided to start up a fishtank mainly devoted to catfish (may add other small community fish mates?). the tank that i'm getting is a shallow/long 20 gallon tank.
Can anyone give me some advises in how to create a well suited enviroment and what kind of catfish is good for a 20gallon tank? thank you so much.

With 2500 species of catfish to choose from, you've got yourself up for a big choice... Not all will be suitable for a 20g tank of course.

Some good candidates would be Corydoras species. They stay small enough for a 20g tank, no problem.

Smaller Loricaridae species, such as Ancistrus, Hypancistrus, Peckoltia and small Panaque species, but careful on the panaque species, as there are some "tankbusters" in there, check with the Cat-eLog here first.

Some Synodontis species are small enough to fit in a 20 g tank. Others way too big, so make sure you know what you're buying here...

Maybe someone can suggest some asian catfish that would be suitable too? Bumblebee cat is the only one I can think of...

There's several other genera and species, but those are the ones that pop up straight off the top of my head.

Once you've decided what fish to keep, you can start thinking about what to keep with it, both in terms of how to organize the tank "furniture" and what "friends" the fish are going with. Different fish will require different furniture, and some will go with just about any fish, whilst others may need special consideration in regard to what they go with.

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Mats

hi i reckon it would be interesting to breed corydoras in there id put say 10 corydoras in and let them breed also consider breed a rare corydora to get ureself some money

thank you for providing suggestions! i visited the pet store today (just got back like 15 minutes ago). they had several types of corydoras there. also, i saw south american bumblebee catfish there too! they looked awesome!! so, i'm probably going to get few corydoras ( peppered cory most likely) and 2 or 3 bumblebee catfish. The staff in the store told me that crypt plants will do well in there, so probably will get those plants (so my catfish will be happy!). again, thanks for all the suggestions--it really helped alot!!

Crypt's are probably fine plants to have together with Cory's and a couple of bumblebee cats.

Cory's do best in a group of at the very least three fish, five or six is even better.

Be aware that you can't just buy a dozen fish all at once and put them in the tank. The tank needs to be "cycled", which means that you need to get the "good bacteria" going that takes care of breaking down the bad stuff that the fish produce. This means that you should fill the tank up with dechlorinated water (you get dechlorinator from your local shop. I like Stress coat, but the other brands are fine too), get the filter, heater etc, going. Leave that running for a few days. You can put plants in from the start.

Then you get the first few fish. The best choice is some hardy specie, as these fish will have to suffer some "bad chemical days" as they help getting the bacteria going. Hardy fish are: some tetra's, some barb's, guppy's, sword tails, plain goldfish and many others.

At the same time as the first fish, get yourself a "water test kit". This should be able to test Nitrate, Nitrite and Ammonia.

After several days, you start testing the water. It will start by going up in ammonia, then nitrate will start climbing (and ammonia dropping), and eventually you'll see the nitrate climbing and nitrite dropping. And finally, the nitrate will come back down a bit. The tank is now "cycled" and ready for more fish. The whole cycling process will probably take 4-8 weeks. During the cycling, you should not change the water in the tank, or clean the filter.

Ammonia and nitrite are both poisonous to fish, and will almost certainly reach levels that your test kit explains as "dangerous for most fish". This is normal, and this is the reason you want hardy fish in there.

Nitrate isn't anywhere near as dangerous for the fish, but you still need to keep an eye on the levels.

Once the tank is cycled, you can start adding more fish. Don't go mad and buy a dozen fish this time either. It's best to only add one type of fish at a time, with a few weeks to separate them. This avoids shocking the tank system, as well as gives you a better chance of not overcrowding the tank.

Of course, when the cycling of the tank has finished, you also should start changing water in the tank. The goal here is to keep the nitrate levels low, below 25 ppm at all times. This will guide you how much water to change and how often. It's better to do smaller more frequent changes than to do fewer bigger ones. A starting point is about 20% of the water every one or two weeks. Once you start having more fish, you may need to increase the volume and/or frequency.

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Mats