Scape and Plant-friendly Big Fish!

[Bishop Wulfila]

Greetings everyone! I have been watching this great community for a couple of years now, but as I was more of a planted/scaped tank person, I never joined to talk big fish! This is my first post, so please allow me a bit of TL/DR preamble to the question.

Last August, 6 monts ago, I completely redid my 60 gal planted Asian tank into a South-ish American substrate/sand/driftwood and plant configuration with peat in the canister for blackwater chemistry. Stocked with a school of rummy noses (Hemigrammus rhodostomus), two albino ancistrus, six three-stripe corys (Corydoras trilineatus) and two miserable Otocinclus that I rescued from the LFS and are now thriving, it felt overstocked, so I added a couple of juvenile albino (pink) Convict cichlids (Amatitlania nigrofasciata ) as an impulse buy. They mated fairly quickly and went straight to reproduction. Problem was (apart from the frequent reproduction cycles) that they keep digging fairly deep pits in the sand bringing the substrate to the surface and uprooting the carpeting plants. As I plan to set up a bigger tank that I need to be fairly meticulously hardscaped and planted, the question I ask is this:

Which large fish (cichlids, catfish, predators, etc) are fairly safe to the hardscape and plants?

What is your opinion / experience?
That means no plant eating, no digging and no violent thrashing about!

A couple of ideas I got today from a great conversation in Instagram with tmk_aquarist were:

- Black arowana (Osteoglossum ferreirai)
- Peacock bass ( Cichla sp. )
- Tigrinus catfish ( Merodontotus tigrinus)

What do you think? Any ideas?

 

[monkeybike]

How big of a tank do you plan on setting up? That will give us a better idea for suggestions.

 

[Bishop Wulfila]

monkeybike My bad, I didn't phrase that correctly. Realistically, any sump aside, the biggest tank I can make is between 170 and 200 gallons, so I'm shooting for that.

I know it's not much, especially for predators, but I was thinking that we could perhaps make it a sticky thread to answer a more general question,as to how may monster fish are there that are compatible with a scaped/ planted tank.

 

[Fat Homer]

I think realistically speaking not many monsters will work in a full on ductch style planted tank...

But if you planned the scape and plants around the fish, then anything is possible...

 

[viejafish]

I am trying to do the reverse of what you plan to do, to convert my cichlid rockscape tank to planted cichlid tank. I am inquiring what plants can survive in my cichlid tank, not what cichlid can co exist with plants.

I have kept fish, mostly cichlid, for decades, but when it comes to plants, I am novice. So I can offer my knowledge about cichlid, and you can tell me about plants.

One common trait of all cichlid is that they are oral oriented. They use their mouth to prepare for spawning sites, move eggs and fry around, and some incubate eggs in their mouth. So all cichlid dig. But their ability to rearrange the substrate varies with their strength, and whether they are substrate or vertical / leave layers. Dwarf cichlid below Ram and Kribensis size don't have the strength to disrupt substrate to any extent that would uproot plants. Vertical surface egg layers such as discus, angel and severum will attack plants, but not substrate during spawning. All cichlid outside these two categories will not be friendly to substrate. Your choice is to either keep only non substrate rooted plants such as anubias, java fern and moss, or place heavy pebble to cap the substrate which will work with cichlid up to convict size. It won't work with larger, more powerful cichlid that will just bulldoze the pebble aside.

Here are my questions: What plants are tough enough to withstand abuse by cichlid, and besides anubias, fern and moss, what else can be grown without substrate.

 

[Fat Homer]

Anubis definitely can if its tied to something like DW or Rocks, my old fahaka used to prune it whenever she didnt like certain leaves and they still survived and there are alot of species to choose from...

Java Fern also comes to mind, again can be tied to rocks or driftwood...

You also got amazon swords that can grow heavy long root systems that once in place not sure the chiclids can move it too easily... at least once its rooted that is (which might be a problem in your tank)

 

[Oddballs]

I mean they aren't full monster predator type but you could look at some of the knife fish. They are docile enough that they aren't going to destroy your plants. Another option is maybe a pike or false pike depending on what state ur in.

 

[magpie]

Are you talking CO2 with groundcover plants or just a generally nice planted tank? If you are OK with a densely planted tank with tougher plants that will be a larger list of fish.

 

[JakeAlmighty]

I am trying to do the reverse of what you plan to do, to convert my cichlid rockscape tank to planted cichlid tank. I am inquiring what plants can survive in my cichlid tank, not what cichlid can co exist with plants.

I have kept fish, mostly cichlid, for decades, but when it comes to plants, I am novice. So I can offer my knowledge about cichlid, and you can tell me about plants.

One common trait of all cichlid is that they are oral oriented. They use their mouth to prepare for spawning sites, move eggs and fry around, and some incubate eggs in their mouth. So all cichlid dig. But their ability to rearrange the substrate varies with their strength, and whether they are substrate or vertical / leave layers. Dwarf cichlid below Ram and Kribensis size don't have the strength to disrupt substrate to any extent that would uproot plants. Vertical surface egg layers such as discus, angel and severum will attack plants, but not substrate during spawning. All cichlid outside these two categories will not be friendly to substrate. Your choice is to either keep only non substrate rooted plants such as anubias, java fern and moss, or place heavy pebble to cap the substrate which will work with cichlid up to convict size. It won't work with larger, more powerful cichlid that will just bulldoze the pebble aside.

Here are my questions: What plants are tough enough to withstand abuse by cichlid, and besides anubias, fern and moss, what else can be grown without substrate.

I've been working around this somewhat in that (in my planted, scaped, co2 injected tanks) I'm allowing my diggers to excavate what they want, and then building around that.

It's not entirely in line with what the OP is looking for (he wants to be in control, as is common in high tech planted tanks) but it's a compromise I'm working with so far that lets me both keep the fish I like and do the planted aquascape business together.

 

[viejafish]

Mixing big fish with planted aquascape is a rarity. I have seen many beautiful planted tanks but few keep big fish. Plant people see plants first, fish second and don't venture into keeping big fish beyond discus and angel. Fish people only see fish and don't care much about aquascape. Some of the ugliest aquascapes are fish only tanks, just a few flower pots, or crowding 50 Malawian in a featureless tank to diffuse aggression. Plant and fish people live in different world.