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hi there, ive got a 400L/100ish gallon tank. will have two 200L filters. its a big around the corner tank with the long sides each 1Metre. plenty of surface area.

im looking for a community thats pretty peaceful i think, but theres heaps of space to establish territories and ill add heaps more in with each batch of fish i add in.

so far my very unrealistic choices are red tailed shark, electric blue jack dempsey and possibly the red rosy barbs.

so my list looks something like this... (all in pairs unless stated.)

-Golden Ancistrus Bristlenose Pleco
-Zebra Pleco
-German Blue Rams (to be added later to a mature tank)
-Albino Kribensis and possibly a regular colour set too.
-Adolfoi or Panda cories
-Flame Dwarf Gouramis
-Neon Blue Dwarf Gouramis
- Glow light tetra shoal
-Neon or cardinal shoal

Notes-
prepared to forfeit the tetras if the other fish will upset them, and forfeit cories for the small plecos.

i cant find much on electric blue jack dempseys so if anyone knows they are compatible with some other things on my list please let me know. thanks.

Smile

Posts: 1882 Location: Teesside

The Jack Demseys are going to cause problems if you want a community tank. They are very aggressive fish which can reach 9 inches/23cm, so all the small tetras on your list will end up as expensive food for the JD. And even if they didn't eat them, the gouramis would be harassed to death. JDs are best kept on their own, or possibly with fish of a similar size. They need 45 american galls/170 litres each, so your tank would be big enough for two, with more appropriate tank mates.

If you were to leave out the JD, only a couple more comments.
Blue/gold/german etc rams (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi in it's various colour morphs) need very soft acid water at 28 to 30 deg C, which is too warm for the other fish, except cardinal tetras. Why don't you look at bolivian rams (Mikrogeophagus altispinosa), which get a bit bigger, can tolerate harder, slightly more alkaline water, and most importantly, need the same temp as the other fish.
The dwarf gouramis are the same species, but in a tank that size, the males should be able to form their own territories especially with a lot of tall plants to break up their line of sight. You will need need more than just one female of each type though as the males are notorious for stressing females to death. If you had two males (1 of each colour morph) then get 4 females. It wouldn't really matter which colour females you got as they would both look the same (silver) and the males wouldn't stick to their own colour anyway.

Posts: 1882 Location: Teesside

Some research on EBJDs for you.

They are less aggressive then ordinary JDs, but they are still cichlids and therefore aggressive. It's just that they aren't quite as bad as ordinary ones.
Like most other large cichlids, they shouldn't be kept with small cichlids
They are very sensitive fish prone to dying when young. They should be kept alone as juveniles. Once they reach 2 inches/5 cm, they are usually OK and can be mixed with other fish, but they still need very clean water.
Recommended tankmates include larger tetras, barbs and rainbowfish for dithers, and zebra loaches for bottom dwellers.

Keeping a male/female pair of EBJDs isn't a good idea. If they spawn, they will terrorise the tank. And EBJD eggs are usually infertile and any fry that do hatch are not viable. They'll only live about 2 weeks, then start to die and pollute the tank. It's not known for certain exactly what the parentage of EBJDs is, but they are likely to be hybrids of some sort, ie their parents were not EBJDs. Someone in south America is supposed to have created EBJDs but he's no longer alive, and no-one knows how he did it. The way EBJDs are produced now is by crossing an EBJD with a normal JD, raising the fry then crossing them back with an EBJD - half the resulting fry will be JD, the other half EBJD.