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Suggest top dwelling schooling fish for a warm medium hard tank

sciencefiction

sciencefiction

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26 Feb 2013
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Hi All,

I want to get a big school of smallish fish that do school together and stick to the top area of the tank, ideally not skittish ones...and something interesting....Also, not jumpers because it's an open top tank but there's a 13cm distance between the top of the tank and the water surface, plus a plastic lip of about 3-4 cm around the edge...

The tank is a round tropical pond of around 735l with current inhabitants 8 clown loaches, 9 denison barb fry and 5 SAE fry. When these grow it will be my max but none of them are top dwelling fish and a bunch of smaller top dwelling fish as dithers should do well as they'll have their own area. The water is 60cm high. The clown loaches have never attacked any fish longer than 1cm. They ignored platy fry for years(wish they didn't) so everything is safe as long as they are suitable to the conditions. I prefer if they live at least a few years, not just a year and a half...providing I don't kill them in a different way :oops:

The water is medium hard. The temperature is between 25-26C. The tank is planted below and above the water, still in the process of planting and growing...There are crypts, anubias, floaters and emersed plants so far.
 
sciencefiction said:
Hi All,

I want to get a big school of smallish fish that do school together and stick to the top area of the tank, ideally not skittish ones...and something interesting....Also, not jumpers because it's an open top tank but there's a 13cm distance between the top of the tank and the water surface, plus a plastic lip of about 3-4 cm around the edge...

The tank is a round tropical pond of around 735l with current inhabitants 8 clown loaches, 9 denison barb fry and 5 SAE fry. When these grow it will be my max but none of them are top dwelling fish and a bunch of smaller top dwelling fish as dithers should do well as they'll have their own area. The water is 60cm high. The clown loaches have never attacked any fish longer than 1cm. They ignored platy fry for years(wish they didn't) so everything is safe as long as they are suitable to the conditions. I prefer if they live at least a few years, not just a year and a half...providing I don't kill them in a different way :oops:

The water is medium hard. The temperature is between 25-26C. The tank is planted below and above the water, still in the process of planting and growing...There are crypts, anubias, floaters and emersed plants so far.
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Top living species all jump that's their escape mechanism
With the exception of the guppy whose tail is too heavy for it to jump

Or there's any of the rasboras or devario species or you can go with something unusual like these

http://www.seriouslyfish.com/species/pseudomugil-furcatus/


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
:) I think you kinda expect the impossible.. The fish sp. you are refering to are the superior mouth sp. They are addapted to stay close to the surface and focus on it to get there food, hence their mouth is designed for that. Since they are schooling/shoaling whatever, there will be a kind of food agression/competition.. This means if some is spotted usualy more fish spot the same at the time, they race to get to it the first and can result in a jump. SO actualy all of them are potential jumpers.. :)
 
Oh i might add, what kinda prevents them from jumping is a very dense surface vegitation like salvinia. Then they would have to jump through this vegitation, it kinda blocks the passage.. But what good will that be in your pond like kinda setup, in an open top aquarium you still have the fun of the glass front panel, but seeing from above you would only see plants. :)
 
zozo said:
The fish sp. you are refering to are the superior mouth sp.
Click to expand...

Well...I have/had platies for years. They are surface feeders and spent ages sucking up biofilm on the surface but they don't jump. I was sort of thinking there are other species like that, just not platies again :rolleyes:

I think its going to be difficult for fish to jump out of the tank, at least I think it will not be easy for a small fish... see the distance between the surface and the top....

20161120_121854_zpshg40ftsk.jpg
 
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Just run the database and look for the superiour mouth sp. you'll find plenty of them. Boraras, rasboras, danios, hatchetfish etc. The other thing is, something less obvious in an aquarium again because of a glass front panel you see them mainly from lateral view. But all of them have this defensive camouflage strategy of a dark colored back, so seeing from above they are pretty good camouflaged. Since you are asking for something interesting, choices will be rather difficult. :)
 
zozo said:
Since you are asking for something interesting, choices will be rather difficult
Click to expand...

Everything is interesting to me...:)Sorry for not expressing myself better but I've mostly kept bottom dwellers and livebearers so to me "interesting" is pretty much about everything out there...:)

Also, they do not need to be strict surface feeders, just fish that occupy higher levels of the water, no matter how they feed. The current fish I have mentioned above swim close to the substrate 80% of the time from what I am noticing so far....The SAEs haven't shown interest in prepared foods but the denison barbs seem to be catching the food as it falls just below mid level and won't venture above for floating food.... I remember the forktail rainbows never explored below mid level much, even for food but weren't stuck to the very surface of the water, explored all mid to top level, had it to themselves really,,,,They ate either falling food or floating food, whichever...So they are suitable but maybe there are others like that I haven't kept...,
 
zozo said:
Just run the database and look for the superiour mouth sp. you'll find plenty of them. Boraras, rasboras, danios, hatchetfish etc.
Click to expand...

I was hoping suggestions from personal experience where possible. I am good at researching but what's written out there doesn't always translate to reality....
A lot of "jumping" small fish are kept in small/shallow CO2 enhanced tanks....ideal conditions for jumping...I had 3 open top tanks, and the 4th had an opening area of around 20cm witdth at the front length wise where fish could jump out and 99% of the "jumpers" I've had were snails walking out...not fish..and those that jumped were in quarantine, newly purchased and still adjusting....

Kuhli loaches are known jumpers and I've had them for about 4 years in open top tanks without any jumping out....I know its never too late... but just saying fish jump for a reason..
 
I would suggest a large school Ember Tetras.. Of all the sp. i kept over the years, they look the best from above imho, not realy top dwelling but very good vissible. I bet there are more i do not have experience with..

But it's a bit a rule of nature, top dwelling fish are the ones looking for food at the surface.. And about all i know have a rather dark back ridge to camouflage.. I have several boraras and from above i just can not say what is what.. Even have a few African - Aplocheilichtys normani - with the neon blue eyes in there and from above i only have the size to determine the difference, the neon eye is not realy showen from above. They all look black or kinda dark from above. The ember tetra is one that stands out from that, it looks ember from all sides.. :)
 
Those 9 denison barb fry and 5 SAE fry are going to get big (& fairly fast given the large water volume etc)
- I don't know how opportunistic the denisonii will be, but an adult SAE cleared out the baby swords ... only at night etc, never saw him (her?) display any unsavoury interest during the day time hours ...
just realized a few weeks later that there were no baby swords, no fry, no juveniles :confused:

As the SAE was the only change, removed him & the baby swords came back again :) (new ones obviously)

I'd look for triangular tetra shapes (Black Phantoms) or something bigger like Congo's (though read through Pedro Rosa's journal first) & other larger tetras
 
My LFS guy said to me the other day that the majority of fish are jumpers. My personal experience of jumpers is female bettas and a cichlid I can't remember the name of. As you said fish jump for a reason, most likely for food or their fed up of the water quality.

Hmmm fish. You could try emperor tetra, I bet they would look nice in numbers or lamp eyes, upside down catfish or how about just male Guppy's, they'll be easy to see

Sent from my XT1021 using Tapatalk
 
Smells Fishy said:
My LFS guy said to me the other day that the majority of fish are jumpers.
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Yes they are, because their are many arguments to find why a fish could be triggered to jump if you think of it. And in a small confined space where they olny have a few feet of space till they reach a vertical wall it is even more likely to occur.

Possible arguments to think of are food competition, mating competition, hierachical competition, parasite irritation, bad water quality stress and irritation, geneticaly inheritet behaivor like descendance of the lungfish like corys and otos which still occasionaly gulp for air, or fish chased around because others are breeding and show maternal defence behaivor, General territorial behaivor/agression, Panic e.g. strong and bright lights switched on suddenly above the tank in a very dark room. Etc. :)

Quite a few things to think of and take into consideration and research before seting up an aquarium and sellecting fish for a community tank.
 
I think that there arent many natural jumpers...only those adapted to jump when their pools of water are drying up... To simulate the dry season in aquariums we stop water changes and overfeed to bring the water quality down. If one keeps the water conditions like that constantly...fish are going to think they need to "move on" somewhere else.

Corydoras and otos in nature stay in the drying up pools because they can tolerate low oxygen conditions unlike others, and in fact they also dont jump out from open top aquariums either, despite their habit of shooting to the surface for air. If they do jump..its extremely uncommon..

I think jumping is mostly due to water conditions and insufficient space in the tank for the fish to create a life for itself...e.g. overcrowding, overexcitement in small tanks with no room to swim, blind fish, etc...Of course all are capable of jumping...
 
alto said:
I though chocolate gouramis were good (as in powerful for their size) jumpers .. turns out Vaillanti are much more efficient :wideyed:
- they don't swim away from the net but leap :eek:
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My new clown loach leaped out of the water from my small tank when I tried to catch him with the net. :) But the tank is 30cm tall...That's the third clown loach that jumped out of this tank, all while in quarantine. But I kept my loaches in large half open and fully open tank for years, and none jumped out while in big volume of water....not yet... So I think it depends on the size of the tank a lot. They just need room to swim away and to swim vertically.

A lot of tanks are very shallow for fish...When I was trying to buy a plastic pond, most sold were between 30 and 40cm heighy despite having a long diameter....What fish can feel comfortable in such shallow tanks providing they were aimed at large fish too....If you look around, most jumping accidents are from shallow tanks...because otherwise even if you corner them with a net, they simply swim downwards and away from you....Very hard to catch a fish in a deep and long enough tank... So fish can be known jumpers but they don't necessarily need a closed tank if given the water volume.

My large clown loach sometimes accidentally got his tail above water, not judging the height of the water when swimming up and down the glass, and that's when I kept him in my last tank which had 45cm height only, totally unsuitable for a fish of this size and behaviour. He was previously in a 65cm tall tank, now in 60cm but I can increase the water level one day...I hope they don't jump out, which can happen....But even though they are jumpers, they only jump when they have no other choice...
 
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alto said:
As the SAE was the only change, removed him & the baby swords came back again :) (new ones obviously)
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Before you posted that I watched a video on youtube of SAEs hunting for large adult cherry shrimp :) So when fully grown they'll eat small fish and shrimp, so will most fish. My clown loaches ate newly born fry, especially cory fry which they wiped out, but they could not manage the livebearers...unfortunately as I wanted to phase them out....(I only have 5 females left now which will be my last platies) When the fry reached a 1.5cm or so, the clowns did not touch them...But the SAEs on that video were taking on very large shrimp, lol:eek:
 
Smells Fishy said:
Hmmm fish. You could try emperor tetra, I bet they would look nice in numbers or lamp eyes, upside down catfish or how about just male Guppy's, they'll be easy to see

Sent from my XT1021 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
I used to love guppies. I got my first guppy 30 years ago ...and they used to be tough fish. Now they are inbred and riddled with diseases. I did have male guppies with my loaches at first....I love their constant display. They used to show off to the forktail rainbow females too which I also kept at that stage...I will check out the emperor tetras and lamp eyes ...
 
I'm tiring of my goldfish due to a few reasons but mainly because i have a plant crave on and i've tried in this tank but its not happening, i want change, probs make a thread about it sometime regarding my plans . So anyway i bought a male guppy when i was last in my LFS, just one to see how it would fair, wouldn't put it past my Black moor to munch it. Good news though its doing well, it only took a couple of feeds to learn that gel food is actual food instead of the flake it would have been on before. Its not massively scared of my fancys either, it darts away from them when they get to near but it doesn't hide. The wee guy is acting as a filter by hoovering up all the tiny bits so i can't fault him really so i might pick up a few more. For the emperors theres also a black version that i only came across yesterday on aquariumspeed, think the emperors will be more visible in your set up, not sure what colour tho.
 
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