# Can you help me select a colorful freshwater fish?



## YMS_1975 (Jan 6, 2013)

I'm starting a new tank; 75 gallons.

I definitely want to have one (maybe two) bristlenose plecos in there. I'm trying to find a nice, *colorful * fish that will co-exist in my tank with the plecos.

I like the Discus fish, but when I read up on their temperature requirements, it didn't align with those of the bristlenose pleco.

Can somebody suggest a freshwater fish, that's very colorful???


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## spanosilvio (Jan 4, 2008)

I would pick some apistogramma, like baenschi, maybe 2 or 3 pair and small dither fish like pencils, you'll spend all day watching the tank. 

Sent from my A501 using Tapatalk 2


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## NVES (Apr 21, 2010)

Roseline sharks are nice and get to be a good size up to 6" and are peaceful colourful fish. I have 5 in my 150 gallon.

Cheers,
Aaron


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

rainbow fish


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## getochkn (Jul 10, 2011)

Platies are cheap and come in all kinds of colors and breed easily enough and make new cooler colors when you mix whites, oranges, blacks, blues, greens, reds together.


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## Jackson (Jan 30, 2009)

BN's can live with discus no problem


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

Rainbow fishes can be extremely colourful, though the males have most of the colour, and they get on fine with plecos. 

Swords and platies both come in many bright colours, but unlike the Rainbow fish, both male and female carry bright colour. They are lively, active and also live bearers, so you'll have broods of fry periodically. Though the parents will eat them if you don't separate fry from the parents, just like guppies. Also fine with plecos.

Male guppies have long been quite colourful, but now modern strain females also carry a lot of colour, both in the body and tail, much more than the old ones used to. While typically still not as bright as males, they are quite attractive, which was not the case decades ago. A group of guppies can be very, very pretty. They get on with almost any other fish that are not big enough to eat them.. plecs would be fine.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

I put about 2 dozen feeder guppies in a tank and now there is well over 100


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## YMS_1975 (Jan 6, 2013)

*And the temperatures?*

Thanks for the responses guys.

Your responses seemed to be focused around their colors & whether or not they were community fish. Will the _temperature reqirements_ of these fish align with keeping a bristelnose pleco's temerature requiments???

I'll Google it myself again, but it's the darndest thing....I look it up (on one site) and I get one answer, look it up again (at another site) and I get a _different_ answer. 

Personally I like the discus fish, but the temperatures did not align with those of the Pleco. At least, according to the site I came across (can't remember which one; I just Googled "Discus+fish+temperature") There's a million sites out there; all giving different information.


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## bob123 (Dec 31, 2009)

I keep plecos in with my Angels at a temp about 80 f with no problem. A good site for plecos and other cats is Planet catfish. All fish mentioned above are community fish. Good luck.


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## Reckon (Mar 6, 2013)

Plecos are fairly adaptive to all water conditions. I've seen them do well in cooler water temps 21-23 deg C to higher temps 28ish.
I currently have plecos in tanks with rainbows, apistos, and rams; high tech tank at water temps around 25 deg C. 
As fairly easy colorful fish to start with I would suggest: rainbows and guppies/endlers. Some people enjoy mollies but I personallly prefer fish that shimmers.


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

For the most part, most fish are fairly adaptable, though there are exceptions of course. Most of the common community fish are quite able to adapt to the same conditions as plecos, and vice versa. I have seen plecs in every kind of tank imaginable, with almost every kind of fish you can think of. 

I think you got suggestions for colourful community fish because you emphasized wanting suggestions for colourful fish, above other considerations. You took the trouble to put the word colourful in COLOUR. I certainly assumed colour was what you were looking for above all else.

I didn't suggest mollies because they don't come in as wide a range of colours as swords or platies do. They are also a fish that likes brackish water. They can adapt well to fresh water and are most often kept that way, but it's not their native habitat. So I suggested fish I know to be very brightly coloured, particularly those where both sexes exhibit colour and are able to coexist with plecos. I would not have suggested any fish I knew did not have the ability to coexist with plecos. There are always going to be some compromises, you can't meet the precise needs of every fish and as you have already learned, there is not much agreement on what the specific needs of each fish are in the first place.

The most important thing, no matter what fish you keep, is to keep the water clean, and maintain stable water parameters, especially a stable pH and no nitrites or ammonia. Temperatures vary in the wild, so keeping the temperature somewhere in the vicinity of the ranges for most of the fish is the best most of us can hope to do. Always do research and make sure any fish you want to keep does not have a very specific need that can't be met in the tank you plan to keep them in. You would not want to keep very small fish with very large ones, because they will likely be eaten by the larger fish, and you would not keep fish that like soft water and acidic pH with fish that like hard water and alkaline pH.


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