PlanetCatfish.com

Hi, I am a university student very new to the hobby and I feel impelled to build a farlowella habitat. I'm thinking of a 150 L tank that I'm going to try to intensively cycle and aquascape for a while before introducing any fish. I'm in the early planning/research stages and I'd like to make an appropriate list of tankmates that could live peacefully with a couple of farlowellas.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions, preferably ones of fish from the same natural biotope.

Oh! and if anyone has preferences or comments about the different species of farlowella I haven't finally decided which kind I would prefer (though they seem similar enough that whatever I can get in my area will do)

Thanks so much!!

Read this for some pointers. How accurate do you wish to recreate a biotope? I can provide an exact list of species that occur with Farlowella in a specific location, but the fish may not be readily available in your LFS.

I'd like to be as faithful to the natural habitat as I can, but I'm somewhat limited by cost and availability. So I'd like to get the entire contents of the aquarium to be from one region but I may have to branch out to a general "south american" habitat. Considering I live in the great white north importing rarer fish is a bit of an expensive and risky prospect (But popular and well known fish are no problem).

Ummm... So... Basically, I would be interested in compatible south american fish. I've done a fair bit of reading but I'm interested in hearing from people who have kept farlowella and know what works well and creates an interesting and healthy aquarium.

Two suggestions:
1) I divide loricariids into "fats" like Hypostomus, Panaque, etc and "
flats" meaning Farlowella, Rineloricaria, Sturisoma, etc. I recently set up a tank that I am really enjoying. It is a 39 gallon tank that is fairly heavily planted with Amazon Swords. The tank's inhabitants are Farlowella, Sturisoma, Rineloricaria, and Loricariichthys. Hidden among the plants are some Bamboo sections for spawning. There are also five penguin tetras in temporary residence as I have no place else to put them. Not a true biotope because the Sturisoma are from the Rio Magdalena, the Rineloricaria I brought back from the Amazon, and the Farlowella and Loricariichthys are from the llanos. It is more of a "theme" tank.



2) A Nice community set up. Use Rams or apistos for cichlids and combine some pretty tetras. I suggest not using any other catfishes as the Farlowella will already have to compete with the cichlids. If you leave the cichlids out you can put in a school of Corydoras. The biotope of F. vittata, the most common Farlowella in the trade has rams, Apisto mcmasteri, and silver hatchet tetras.

Yeah, I was thinking of a pair of apistogramma agassizi, but they aren't compatible with corydoras?

Never had any problems Corydoras combining with dwarf cichlids; it's good to think it out how to decorate the tank. Where do you put the plants, wood etc, how much sand is unplanted, open area etc.

Cory's like open sand to rest, so do Apisto's for nesting.
For obvious reasons there should be more than one open sandy place. The whole thing is; floorsize!
what are the exact dimensions of your tank?

Well, the tank is currently theoretical. It'll probably be 33 US gal, or the next immediate size up from that. I've already planned out the contents of the tank and it will be great for cory's and dwarf cichlids, it was just something the other guy said about corys and the cichlids not going together (I think they're from different regions, specific regions). But I can't afford to be THAT exact with the biotope, so I think my final fish list will be:
2x Farlowella X (whatever species my lfs stocks)
2x Apistogramma agassizi
6x Corydoras X

Although I might change those twos to threes, and I might add more corys after everything is stable for a bit. I'm in sort of a 'wait and see how happy they are' sort of mood.

Wow, I just saw a picture of Corydoras sterbai, and now I HAVE to have them. So that's what my corys will be, I nice shoal of six or so, won't that be nice?