Tank size question

[austings]

I went into my local fish store, they have a 45 gallon tank with stand. That I absolutely love and want. But before I buy it, I was wondering what species I could keep in it, and how many? I live in an apartment, and I just dont have the space for another 55+ gallon tank.

Thanks for an input!

[Gpwhite89]

It depends on if you want africans or new world cichlids either way in a 45 you should not get anything that will grow larger than 3 to 5" and not put more than 3 or 4 cichlids in the tank. along with a pleco, I would assume if you choose africans they actually do better on the side of overstocked because of aggression problems, for them prob 10 to 12 fish once again depending on the size.

[austings]

I will be going with african cichlids. Can you recommend some African species?

[ratherbfishnjp]

Well lets start with one main fish you want and work around that. what is the length of the 45? If going with africans, Over filter the heck out of it. In my 60 flat back hex I am doing about 900 gph plus have an air disk in the middle so there is no still water in it anywhere. For mbuna, your gonna need a lot of rock work and caves for fish to escape aggression issue. another way of doing this is overstocking the tank (like I said, there is no such thing as too much filteration with mbuna) I have a good friend who is a pretty big breeder who has told me that if you have an aggression issue, add more fish. For instance, a 55 regular, 17 to 20 fish but try to have at least trios of a male to 3 or 4 females when doing this. I have taken his advice years ago and have not had any problem with aggression unless they are trying to spawn. You are going to want to keep your colors of mbuna seperate also. Try not to have something with blue and black bars (demasoni) with other fish that have black and blue bars. I great example of different colors in a tank would be Demasoni, yellow labs, and try some nice looking red zebras. That will be a very colorful tank. watch the red zebras with the yellow labs though because there maybe times they would try to spawn with a yellow lab.