# What fish can I keep in 30 litres?



## Treaclesmum

I'm thinking of getting a fish tank, approx 30 or maybe 40 litres... but it seems to be harder than it looks!!

What fish can I keep in there? I love Shubunkins and Oranda goldfish but people say they need huge tanks, and also platys are smaller and very pretty but they breed so fast I could be overrun in no time...!!!

Any ideas??


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## NaomiM

With a 30l you're pretty limited. Definitely too small for any type of goldfish, and a bit too small even for platys - they can get a bit irritable and start bullying one another if space is limited!

It would be perfect for a single betta (Siamese fighting fish), which are beautiful fish with great personalities, but best kept on their own. Or if you like platys, you may also like their smaller relatives, endlers - less variety of colour/pattern than with platys, but lovely little fish and you could fit a few of them in a 30-40l tank. Get all males if you don't want them to breed  the males are more colourful than the females anyway. Or there's one or two other tiny breeds of shoaling fish, such as chilli rasboras, ember tetras or platinum tetras, that would be OK to have a small shoal in that size tank. Or it would make a great shrimp tank - shrimp are fascinating to watch and you could even have a go at breeding them 

If you are able to do so, though, I would recommend getting a slightly larger tank, say between 60 and 100l. That way you can have a community of different varieties of tropical fish, and a larger tank is actually easier to maintain as the water parameters stay more stable in a larger volume of water.

Once you've decided on a tank, let us know if you need any guidance with setting it up - it's highly recommended to do a fishless cycle, which is the most humane way of setting up a tank, and will save you a lot of problems down the line.


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## lostbear

Sardines?

&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;..


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## Treaclesmum

NaomiM said:


> With a 30l you're pretty limited. Definitely too small for any type of goldfish, and a bit too small even for platys - they can get a bit irritable and start bullying one another if space is limited!
> 
> It would be perfect for a single betta (Siamese fighting fish), which are beautiful fish with great personalities, but best kept on their own. Or if you like platys, you may also like their smaller relatives, endlers - less variety of colour/pattern than with platys, but lovely little fish and you could fit a few of them in a 30-40l tank. Get all males if you don't want them to breed  the males are more colourful than the females anyway. Or there's one or two other tiny breeds of shoaling fish, such as chilli rasboras, ember tetras or platinum tetras, that would be OK to have a small shoal in that size tank. Or it would make a great shrimp tank - shrimp are fascinating to watch and you could even have a go at breeding them
> 
> If you are able to do so, though, I would recommend getting a slightly larger tank, say between 60 and 100l. That way you can have a community of different varieties of tropical fish, and a larger tank is actually easier to maintain as the water parameters stay more stable in a larger volume of water.
> 
> Once you've decided on a tank, let us know if you need any guidance with setting it up - it's highly recommended to do a fishless cycle, which is the most humane way of setting up a tank, and will save you a lot of problems down the line.


Thanks this is good advice 

I have seen a nice tank of 64l, I wonder if I could mix a few platys with perhaps 2 orandas? Would they get on, or if not, what other fish would mix well with platys? They are moderate temp fishies rather than warm temp I believe.

I've read that you never need to empty the tank completely for cleaning, just use a siphon to clean the gravel and only change up to 30% water at a time, which sounds much easier than the goldfish tanks I had when I was a child!! We used to change everything once a week and it was quite a task!!!


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## Phoenix24

The only tank size suitable for any kind of fancy goldfish (such as an oranda) is 150L for a single fish, and an additional 50L for each additional fish. If you are dead set on getting an oranda you can forget any tank size below 150L. If you are dead set on getting a smaller tank, you can forget goldfish altogether.

A 64L tank is large enough to house a small community of fish. Depending on whether or not you want to use a heater or not, and what the pH of your water is, will determine what kind of community of fish you can keep.

Your typical platy is a sub-tropical to tropical fish (and so would not mix very well with a goldfish anyway) and requires a pH of 7-8.2. Guppies and mollies also prefer these conditions (if you are after live-bearing fish). The majority of your other tropical and subtropical fish tend to be in the acidic pH range of 6-7, though some fish are easy going on conditions and can handle a wide range. It helps to do your homework first.

Temperature wise, if you want to not use a heater in the tank, there are a range of fish suited to cooler, unheated water (called temperate fish) and of these you will be looking at the smaller end of the scale. The classic small temperate fish is the white cloud mountain minnow - they are shoaling, community fish, easy to keep, not too fussy, and the males will put on a good show displaying to females. If you go for a tank closer to 100L there are some smaller barb species (such as odessa barbs, and golden barbs), and a rather stunning (and expensive) north american fish called the rainbow shiner. Many corydoras species also prefer the cooler end of the temperature scale. A much larger tank gives you even more options.

If you stick a heater in but keep it in the low 20s, there's a range of sub-tropical tetras and some hardy tropical fish that you can add to the list of fish to choose from.

My advice to you would be to decide how big a tank you are willing to go up to - as Naomi said the bigger tanks are typically much easier to maintain - and get a water test kit to at least determine your water pH. Decide if you want to add a heater or not, as this will ultimately decide if you are going for cold water or tropical fish (or somewhere in-between).

Take a look at the following websites, which will give you an idea of what species you can get:

Seriously Fish - Feeling fishy? (search for a species to see what conditions it needs)

AqAdvisor - Intelligent Freshwater Tropical Fish Aquarium Stocking Calculator and Aquarium Tank/Filter Advisor (plug in your tank and water parameters, and see what species you can have and what you have to do to maintain the tank)

And then when you haver an idea of what you are going to realistically be able to keep, please come back to us and we will explain the most important step of all for a new fish keeper - the fishless cycle.

The fishless cycle basically sets up the tank's biological filtration before adding any fish. Fish produce toxic waste in the form of ammonia, and bacteria break this down into toxic nitrite, and more bacteria break this down into (much less toxic) nitrate. Without the bacteria the ammonia will build up and poison the fish - and this can happen in as little as a few days in a new tank (especially small or heavily stocked tanks). We don't want this to happen, obviously, so when you're ready will can explain more about it.


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## NaomiM

What Phoenix said 

Platys should be fine in the 64l if you decide to go for this, though you will need a heater as most of the selectively-bred varieties of platys generally available are less tolerant of cooler temperatures than the pure variatus platys (which can be kept as a temperate fish if you can find them, but most are now inter-bred with other varieties and therefore less hardy).

Good tankmates for platys, if you decide to go down this route, include endlers or guppies (but not both together as they will inter-breed), various corydoras species, and various small peaceful tetras, barbs and rasboras. The aqadvisor site Phoenix linked to is very useful to help you decide, as is this one: Freshwater Tropical Fish Photos & Species Profiles at the Age of Aquariums If it's any inspiration to you, I keep platys in a 70l with neon tetras, espei rasboras, bronze corys, endlers and red cherry shrimp. (I have pretty much the minimum recommended number of each species, and am fully stocked.)

If you know your tapwater pH and hardness, this can help you decide on suitable species (or at least eliminate unsuitable ones). You might be able to find this out, at least roughly, on your water company's website, though as Phoenix said, you'll still need to get a test kit (a liquid one such as the API master kit, not the all-in-one test strips as they're inaccurate) in order to get an accurate pH reading and also to see you through the fishless cycle.


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## Phoenix24

Just to add - even if your tap water pH is above 7 (mine is 7.4) then the addition of certain substrates can alter the water. In my tropical tank I have bogwood and the pH is about 6.5, and in my temperate tank the pH is around 7.6. Using coral sand with make water harder (typically only used in marine systems or when species need quite hard water).

But its a good place to start to check the water first regardless, as its not always so easy to alter pH.


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## cats galore

i personally wouldn't have barbs and some of the tetra family as they can be aggressive with other fish (nipping fins etc). Having them limits what fish you can keep. Also barbs and tetras like to be in large shoals so need space to swim around. I don't think even a 64lt tank is big enough for them.


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## PetloverJo

30 litres a load of cherry shrimp, it is great watching them run around


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## Ceiling Kitty

I have a 125L tank with six or seven platys in it and I reckon that's pretty much stocked.


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## NaomiM

cats galore said:


> i personally wouldn't have barbs and some of the tetra family as they can be aggressive with other fish (nipping fins etc). Having them limits what fish you can keep. Also barbs and tetras like to be in large shoals so need space to swim around. I don't think even a 64lt tank is big enough for them.


Agreed though it depends which barbs and tetras - I was thinking of cherry barbs which should be OK I'd have thought. I should have been more specific though. Wouldn't want to put tiger barbs in there, for example!


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## Ceiling Kitty

Gotta love a rummy-nose tetra...


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## Treaclesmum

I really like platys so want about 4 or 5 if possible, I've heard u can tell male and female apart by their fins and have all males if you don't want lots of fry! Would also like maybe 3 danios, and perhaps a couple of shrimp? Does this sound a good community tank?


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## Phoenix24

cats galore said:


> i personally wouldn't have barbs and some of the tetra family as they can be aggressive with other fish (nipping fins etc). Having them limits what fish you can keep. Also barbs and tetras like to be in large shoals so need space to swim around. I don't think even a 64lt tank is big enough for them.


Don't tar all fish with the same brush! I kept 4 golden barbs in a community tank with tetras and an angelfish, and the angelfish was never bothered by fin nipping , nor was there any aggression at all from the barbs. And my cherry barbs have been the most peaceful fish out of all of them.

In my other (temperate) tank I keep odessa barbs (and now also those golden barbs as they prefer cooler water) with white clouds, rainbow shiners (if anything they are the bullies) and even a teeny tiny daisy's rice fish (a very peaceful cool water fish) and there is no problem at all. The odessas (I have 9) squabble with each other but that's about it. The golden barbs keep to themselves.

And as for the tetras - it depends on the size of the fish. Some tetras are very small (platinums are my smallest, green fire tetras are pretty dinky too), and you can keep a small shoal easily in a 65L tank. The minimum shoal sizes are generally recommended at 6+, though obviously the more the merrier if you have the space.

The Aquarium advisor will tell you how many of each fish you can comfortably keep in a given tank size, and the seriously fish website gives you recommended minimum tank sizes for each fish species.


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## Phoenix24

Treaclesmum said:


> I really like platys so want about 4 or 5 if possible, I've heard u can tell male and female apart by their fins and have all males if you don't want lots of fry! Would also like maybe 3 danios, and perhaps a couple of shrimp? Does this sound a good community tank?


Danios prefer cooler water to start with, and need quite a bit of tank space as they are quite fast swimmers. I've not kept shrimp but I suspect they are tropical inverts and will need warm water.

Have you considered either guppies or endlers? They are smaller than platies, live bearing, and nice looking fish too.


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## NaomiM

Also, danios are shoaling fish and should be kept in groups of at least 6. I'd agree with endlers as an alternative, or a small shoal of one of the small tetra species (check your pH for compatability first though), or maybe espei rasboras or cherry barbs. Any of these except for endlers need to be kept in groups of 6 or more. Have a play on aqadvisor to work out how many you could have in your tank size.

I have heard of platys eating shrimp, though my one platy is fine with my red cherry shrimp. Good beginner shrimp (and not too expensive) are cherry, amano or tiger. They can tolerate lower temps but ideally prefer it slightly warmer. Most of the fish species mentioned, including platys, will thrive at around 24 C.

And yes, sexing platys is easy - just look at the anal fin (the one nearest their tail on the underside). In females it's fan-shaped like their other fins; in males it's elongated and points back toward their tail. Don't necessarily assume that the shop staff will be able to tell the difference, though!


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