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Suggest top dwelling schooling fish for a warm medium hard tank

Well, I suppose there will be no catching now :)

So far they are not interested in any other fish. They keep very tightly in a pack around the tank. They do argue amongst themselves all the time but the next moment they are swimming together happily again. I saw a video of a good school of SAEs and clown loaches together and they seemed quite content with each other. Thatts what I am hoping for. but who knows what will turn out...
 
I am only clutching at straws without having the experience of keeping SAEs but I have read they can become aggressive if kept singly. I was surprised to see them so sociable with each other. They dont leave each others sight for long and if one gets left out by accident it tends to stay at the same spot it got lost until the rest come back and they always do. I had never seen this before. Even the clown loaches, being extremely social fish, dont tend to do that.

They also swim a lot. They are hyper active. So my guess is in a smaller tank if feeling cramped it can lead to aggression.

I also read, after I got them, that they can be aggressive towards similar looking fish such as the denison barbs ... If I had read that before I wouldnt have got them. So far they actually seem to school with the barbs when I threaten them with the siphon during a water change. Sometimes one SAE would get confused for a moment and swim with the barbs or a barb would be swimming with the school of SAEs but other than that they are getting on ok. Perhaps raising them together and plenty of space and cover will help in the long run...
 
sciencefiction said:
I also read, after I got them, that they can be aggressive towards similar looking fish such as the denison barbs ... If I had read that before I wouldnt have got them
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I suspect much of this is from single fish or 1-3 SAE being kept in smaller tanks, I'd expect the denisonii to hold their own ... I don't know how small yours are but both species usually grow quite quickly
 
alto said:
both species usually grow quite quickly
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I hope they do grow quickly if everything turns alright but I read it takes 1.5 years for the denison barbs to reach full size and I have no idea about the SAEs. In the shop where I got mine, they've got a display tank with some very old SAEs in there. They look huge, way bigger than the ones in the video above, about double the girth of these SAEs and a 1-1.5 inch longer. Mine are tiny. They look like short straws from above :)
 
You know....I nearly bought a peacock eel while looking for top dwellers....I almost got it and the only thing that stopped me is that it says they are hard to get to eat when first bought...needing live food I can't get here..I think the problem is I dislike top dwellers....but there are so many species of fish I'd like to at least try....
 
Have you thought of "killi's" - look for killi clubs for a greater range of species than your lfs may get in (though special order way work given enough patience)

Epiplatys species are all top dwelling

"Lampeye killi's" are also upper dwelling & that brilliant eye & iridescence should make them stand out
 
Have you considered a male only group of Poecilia latipinna sailfin molly - they are stunning fish when kept in bigger tanks, just look for good quality stock
(quite the opposite fish to the killi's :D )
 
sciencefiction said:
not sure I'd want to keep mollies. They remind me of platies
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they shouldn't but now they are so commercially interbred that your average platy/molly is just that :(
I was looking at some of your tanks photos & suddenly imagined those stunning sailfin molly's in there - not many shops here bring in the sailfins as they are big fish that really need a bigger tank to thrive.

There are also bigger "lampeyes" that would be rather nice to mix in with the smaller species (the bigger species are often quite expensive)
 
Also have very greedy black tetras and for a short periode i had the roaring dwarf gourami with them and the guoramis where always out competed and to shy to mingle with the tetras agression. They were always chased back into the plants..

I started using a mortar and pestle and have a sinking pellet Sera Vipa chip and a spirulina pellet.. I'll grind and mix it together.. Now the spirulina falls appart to a powder and the much harder vipa chip stays more coarse and sinks much faster.. Both sink finaly, but in a different rate and the spiruline floats for a while.

The amount of food i give is the same, but less consentrated and much smaller pieces the surface arae the food is applied to is much larger and all fish get their fair share. What reaches the bottom is cleaned by the shrimps, oto's and cory's. :)
 
zozo said:
Also have very greedy black tetras and for a short periode i had the roaring dwarf gourami with them and the guoramis where always out competed and to shy to mingle with the tetras agression. They were always chased back into the plants..

I started using a mortar and pestle and have a sinking pellet Sera Vipa chip and a spirulina pellet.. I'll grind and mix it together.. Now the spirulina falls appart to a powder and the much harder vipa chip stays more coarse and sinks much faster.. Both sink finaly, but in a different rate and the spiruline floats for a while.

The amount of food i give is the same, but less consentrated and much smaller pieces the surface arae the food is applied to is much larger and all fish get their fair share. What reaches the bottom is cleaned by the shrimps, oto's and cory's. :)
Click to expand...

I've always fed small pellets in sizes from 1 to 3mm. When I had my forktail rainbows, because they fed from the surface only....I'd let the 1mm float and sink the bigger sized pellets with my hand for the bottom feeders. Now that I don't have corydoras in the tank I don't let much food hit the bottom. I feed the clown loaches first because they come up to the surface a lot these days and literally mop all that I give them quite fast...When the excitement has worn off, they do go back foraging the bottom for a few minutes before they come up again asking for more food, and at this stage I feed the denison barbs with 1mm pellets, also the SAEs come up too....Everyone is fed well.... But I also sink the 1mm pellets for the barbs because they do not take them floating at the surface. They mop them all before they've fallen halfway down...If I had surface feeders...I can just let the pellets float and I am sure I'll have no problem feeding small surface feeders like this given the surface area of the tank...None of my current fish seem to be interested at eating floating food...I think the point is feeding the right bite size food so if the fish gets it, it swallows it straight away...
 
Well, I got 9 cute baby harlequin rasboras.....They've just been acclimated and are in my small tank with two more baby clown loaches....I know very little about these rasboras and like a newbie, I asked the owner of the shop(its a small local shop). He said they're from Indonesia, same water where clown loaches come(he knows what fish I keep) and the water there he says is with ph between 7 and 7.6... Funny, because I found a paper on breeding clown loaches and it says exactly the same....high ph...where everyone seems to think clown loaches come from soft acidic water....I'll post it if anyone is interested...

6 of the rasboras started schooling around straight away but 3 are hiding. I know the rasboras are quite common but they are super cute......

One of the clown loaches is breathing heavily and is pretty stressed from what I can tell....we'll see how it goes...They spent about 2 hrs in the bags..but I am pretty certain they were at least two weeks in the shop because one of them is a spotted loach and he was there the last time.

Happy Christmas everyone.
 
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