# Just curious



## Azaezl (15 Mar 2008)

After reading a few different topics on a few different forums I was curious as to what if any bottom dwellers people had in their tanks and if you were setting up another tank would you have bottom dwellers again?

I personally have alot of corys and as much as I love them they can be a bit of a pain when it comes to planting, I'd love to really heavily plant my tanks but my corys need the floor space, esp. in my gold cory tank, some of them are very big and boisterous and have knocked a few plants out of place. My next setup is going to be an arcadia arc tank(35L) which I'm going to heavily plant and the inhabitants will be a couple of dwarf puffers. If....sorry when(  ) I do another tank after that I probably won't have bottom dwellers, I have 2 4ft tanks to setup as well when I save up the money and then I'll have my current 35G empty which I'll hopefully heavily plant, I'm probably going to opt for a large shoal of threadfin rainbows, plenty of shrimp and some otos. Now that I've said that I'll probably end up going for cichlids  as I've never kept them, apart from a geophagus briefly for a few weeks.


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## Ed Seeley (15 Mar 2008)

Aside from Otos and ancistrus (and shrimp I suppose), the only bottom dwellers in most of my tanks are dwarf cichlids.  They are great fish with real character.  The only tank with Cories in is mainly Crypts so they don't uproot them.


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## ceg4048 (15 Mar 2008)

Hi, I share Ed's opinion on this. Dwarf cichlids are much more interesting in form color and character. I'm not even enamored with ottos from an aesthetic standpoint but they do serve a purpose by helping with algae control so I tolerate them and never feed them so that they stay hungry and useful.

Cheers,


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## GreenNeedle (16 Mar 2008)

I have pitbull plecs and dwarf cichlids.

They both require some bare substrate.

The plecos sift the sand for leftovers and the Rams need substrate to dig their breeding pits.

Therefore I leave some of the front open.

andy


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## nry (16 Mar 2008)

Pygmy cory for me, they aren't big enough to uproot anything, even HC.  Same character as their larger brethrin too, especially in larger groups, say 6+


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## Azaezl (16 Mar 2008)

Really interesting to see a few of you have bottom dwellers, I thought they were few and far between in planted tanks. So here is another question has anyone done or plans to do a planted goldfish tank?


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## Dan Crawford (19 Mar 2008)

I've not done a goldie planted tank coz i believe they eat most plants and they are messy so in a heavily planted tank maintenance would be a nightmare, just my thoughts.

I have a L38 pekoltia in my tank and it was one of the biggest mistakes i've made so far, digging all around my wood to find a nice home as if he didn't care less about the 'scape! LOL I've passed him on the Jeremy and he is having the same problem  

I had some dwarf corys for a while and i think they had a lot to do with my struggling to grow HC it never really had much chance to get rooted since they were always knocking it about and i was forever scooping it off the top and replanting it and there was loads of it too


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## Azaezl (19 Mar 2008)

I sort of have a planted goldfish tank, it's not even close to what i want it to look like, mainly because the goldfish only get the castoffs from the other tanks. When I setup their new 4ft tank I will hopefully plant it a little better then what it is now. On the eating front, it's down to the individual goldie, mine on the whole leave the plants alone, the days I skip a feed they might nibble a little bit but not enough to cause any lasting damage. 

Here's my goldie tank;
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/readers_tank.php?upload=1476

I used to have a couple of BN plecs, they were fine with the plants but created far too much poo, I like the tanks to look as clean as possible and lots of plec poo dotted about is definately a no no  so they were given to a fellow fishkeeper to mess up his tank lol.


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## gixer (19 Mar 2008)

10 Corys here.

Not had any problems with then uprooting me plants, but my substrate is 2" to 3" deep and the plants are deeply planted.




Cheers
Mark


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