PlanetCatfish.com

OK, my boyfriend has bought me a small tank as a Christmas Present (SuperFish Aqua 60 (60L)) no - he didn't wrap it! - I think he was fed up of me threatening to put small fish in our bigger tank.

Now I'm stuck... any suggestions for a good/colourful tropical setup? Am also tinkering with the idea of a mini-marine or brakish tank... too many options!

Right, so it's really what YOU want that matters. It's much better if you come up with some ideas, then discuss with us - my favourite fish may not suit you at all.

A 60 liter tank is about 60 x 30 x 30 cm, so the absolute maximum size fish you can keep is about 15cm - but I'd say 10cm is a better max size - gives you room for a few more fish too. The fish in the Cat-eLog that are under 10cm long is quite a few: 778 species, to be precise.

And that's JUST the catfishes. For all tropical fish, I'd expect there to be a few thousand species that match the size of your tank. Of course, many of these fish are relatively hard to find, so the number of species that would be available in shops on a regular basis (without travelling hundreds of miles and paying a fortune, at least).

Here is a list of the most popular species pages that range from 4 cm to 10 cm in size. Some of these are easy to find, others are popular to look at on the web, but hard to find in the shops (e.g. Hypancistrus zebra are pretty difficult to find, and cost a small fortune - shops local to me sell them at £180 each, for 2-3cm long fishes).

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Mats

Thanks Mat... the list is going to be v.useful. I was having a serious mental block and couldn't get past neon or cardinal tetras!

Lisa Biddlecombe wrote:I was having a serious mental block and couldn't get past neon or cardinal tetras!

Well seeing as you asked, I find tetras incredibly boring behaviour wise. They might look nice, but they just sulk around all day in the shadows.

For a better display, I would recommend smaller cyprinids of the following genera:

Puntius
Danio
Rasbora
Boraras
Oreichthys
Barbus

Alternatively, you should look at small gouramis or badids:
Badis
Dario
Colisa

Plus, maybe a few loaches or catfishes such as:
Pangio


Click on the links, and let us know what you like the look of and what you can get hold of, and we can recommend a combination to suit.