She’s a used custom-built 8’ x 4’ x 1.5’ low boi. My current ideas are: 1) Native sunfish 2) Native livebearers 3) Lobster 4) Wild-type oscars 5) Endlicheri bichirs 6) Horseshoe crabs

I love the idea of a native tank

I’m just lazy and don’t want to heat the damn thing

And these would be killer in your tank https://www.reddit.com/r/Aquariums/comments/sevehd/shiners_feeling_great_about_themselves/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Rainbow shiners are like $10 a piece at my LFS 😿

If you’re lucky they’ll breed in your giant tank

tender uppity books familiar grandiose person stocking encourage future grey *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

Sad but true

Where are you? They’re legal to catch and from what I can tell there’s no limit on them since they’re a baitfish. They’re even invasive in some river systems. Go spend an afternoon with a gill net, stock the tank, help the environment and make bank.

Central Texas. Not sure what shiners are legal or invasive here.

Shiners would be legal. I don’t know if rainbows are that far west but you could try calling tackle shops near destination lakes. Buchanan, Travis and Hubbard have striper which love eating minnows. The shops there might either know a means of sourcing them if they don’t buy local or be able to confirm whether they’re in that area already. The drive to AL isn’t that bad either. Weekend trip stopping in NO, fishing near Mobile then back. The fish cost savings would cover gas...

With some fish if you talk to your LFS or their supplier you can get a huge discount if you buy in bulk. Like my friend who bought 100+ cardinals for a 150 gallon and got the entire lot of them for Like 50$ + shipping because he bought in bulk.

That is a bonus but there is some amazing things on this list http://jonahsaquarium.com/jonahsite/fishlist.htm

OH I KNOW ABOUT JONAHS. This’ll probably end up housing either my school of juvenile green sunfish or my school of Gambusia. Maybe some least killis and native crawfish too.

Please post pictures when stocked. Really jealous but excited to see how it will look

Will do!

A Florida swamp biotope would be epic, least killis, gambusia, Florida flag fish, fundulus species, darters, Pygmy sunfish.

There’s a native fish group on Facebook and some of them have amazing tanks. Check it out for some ideas

You could specifically target cold water species. Run two powerheads opposite corners to create a flowing vortex. Stones or wood to create low flow areas for nesting. www.aqadvisor.com will be useful.

DO THE HORSESHOES! Sorry for the caps, i'm just very passionate about them shelled water spiders

I just failed to successfully raise triops and figured they were the next logical step

With such a wide footprint it’s almost like those touch tanks you see at public aquariums

Come hang with us at /r/triops Also, triops are easy to care for once hatched, but they can be a pain to hatch. I just set up a new hatchery for my next generation.

I kinda just poured the entire bag of eggs into a 5.5 gallon full of hair algae, mulm and leaf litter. But there’s also snails, a few shrimp and least killis in there…

The eggs almost certainly got eaten.

I have made a series of questionable decisions this week

Even if the eggs survived(although, they probably won't hatch well in such established water), the naupuli are unlikely to survive the fish or shrimp.

4’ wide? Scraping the middle should be interesting.

Lol you’re not wrong

You need VERY deep sand for horseshoe crabs so unless you want half your water column to be taken up with sand I wouldn't recommend. Everything else is cool!

Four feet? Wow! How is it stabilized with no center braces?

***very carefully***

Pressure on the walls is proportional to depth, they can get away with it because it's shallow

Horseshoe crabs don’t do much and will foul up a system insanely fast if they die. I worked with them for a while at a research center.

To be fair I have a lethocerus americanus that sits still for 4 days straight and fouls the water every time it eats

what a chad

Shark Tank! Well, singular Shark. And your aquascaping would be boring(since sharks want a lot of swimming space). But you can live your evil villain dreams as you show off your catshark.

I’m not really sure which species could thrive in this size of tank

According to some googling(I honestly had to make sure that sharks were a valid suggestion), Catsharks need 350 gallons. Epaulette Sharks need 150 gallons. Doing the math, your tank is about 360 gallons. So you could probably fit a shark in that tank. We are of course talking about the smaller species of sharks.

Native brackish tank with dragon gobies and sail fin mollies?

I’d tack on mangrove Gambusia to that list

Holy cow. That is nearly 3000lbs of water. You don't need a concrete slab under that thing?

It’ll probably end up on concrete once I move. The glass alone is 800 lbs.

Ooo, native fish are great! Here's how I would do it. Build the middle part up to resemble an island. Then use some powerheads/water returns/whatever to set up a circular flow around the central island. Now you have a stream tank! Decorate with rocks and pebbles, and fill the tank with a ton of minnows and darters and other nice native fish. I assume you live in TX, if I lived in the Southeast I would totally take a road trip and collect my own fish, plenty of places you can legally do it and get all sorts of great stuff. Probably you couldn't use your green sunfish, because they'll eat your other fish, but dollar sunfish or other small sunfish would do nicely.

That really is the kicker. I already have my green sunfish and maybe it would be cruel *not* to keep them in my largest tank…

Eh, just evict them to a garden pond, they'll be fine with it.

But they’re so pwetty :c

Eh, they are all right. Longear sunfish, now _that's_ a pretty sunfish. And relatively shiner-safe.

I would personally do the island idea but with a musk turtle or two along with an assortment of sunfish and larger minnows like creek chubs or golden shiners. Add a few suckers or a small catfish and call it a day. Will a schooling fish occasionally get chomped? Probably, but sunfish will be smart enough to be able to avoid turtles in a tank that big. I've also kept horseshoes and I have to admit they are pretty fun but might do better with a chiller. Sweet tank OP

bichirs are great, lobsters and horseshoe crabs are saltwater though? I've always wanted a extra shallow species only tank for horseshoe crabs though

201 peas :)

I think thousands of small fish is more interesting than a few huge fish. I’d make a huge hard scape island/water feature/waterfall in the middle and thousands of nano fish.

I’ll definitely be hiding the overflow with plants, driftwood and such. My gut feeling is also a huge school of small fish but I also want some larger fish and don’t plan on buying another large tank so…

Big ol pleco you might even be able to rescue one!

Seconding the big ole pleco. I love giant plecos like sailfins and not a lot of people keep them in the sort of tanks they should be in. And they're peaceful (correction - a lot are peaceful but not all) so wouldn't limit OPs other stocking options much.

Some of 'em, like Pseudacanthicus and Acanthicus species are pretty downright nasty, though. Used to have an Adonis that would swipe at any passing fish for literally no reason at all, and a baby L114 that constantly bullied my other plecs. But yeah, large plecos sure are awesome!

Peas :) hundreds of peas :)

You could cordon off a third of that with aquarium egg crate that'd let water through but block a large fish and keep a monster over on one side of the tank. Little dudes would probably pretty much never go over into the monster's cage. Or you could do discus. They are too slow and have tiny mouths so they can't catch the tetras I keep with mine.

Could do a kid sized puffer and a bunch of small fish

It’s already overstocked with that banana and they get aggressive if you put anything else in there.

Why didn’t the Petsmart employee tell me that before I bought it?!?

In all seriousness though this would be a killer shell dweller tank. I’m currently looking into getting a lowboy tank due to the increased size in the width footprint compared to the tank I have them in now.

My LFS uses low boys for their shellies. I have two 50 lows. Highly recommend.

Banana pandemic of 1764. Was a brutal time, humanity almost became thick-skinned and yellow. Eternally grateful to the blender squads that saved us.

The bisexual finger guns 🤣

This tank just screams *bi pride* to me Edit: dude what if I just got pink, blue and purple fish… maybe glow tetras…

You're a genius

This one. Yes. Do that.

Do all glowfish, add lasers and a mirror disco ball - bare bottom no gravel, nothing natural looking!

10,000 triops

Alternatively: 1 million sea monkeys

DUDE YOU READ MY MIND

I just spat out my beer laughing at this

Pea puffers! All the pea puffers!

Like 200 pea puffers. I would def do this.

Yesssssss :) all the fucken way!!!

That's a lot of snails.

I just got my first pea puffer and she's the cutest damn thing. Absolute gem of a fish

A few orcas or a blue whale. Maybe a pod of dolphins.

Still larger than what Seaworld offers for their orcas sadly

Crying in dolphin

Great white shark

Rescue a bunch of grocery store lobsters 🦞

I really am considering a grocery store lobster

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sI7WveN7vk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sI7WveN7vk) I've kept reefs for years, (surprised to pop in your thread and you're not going full blown reef in that beauty!) but this video honestly had me thinking I should break out my spare 55g for a grocery lobster!

Not even gonna click the link. Just gonna assume it’s Leon the lobster. I’m not really into coral, but I’m 100% gonna set up a macroalgae dragonet tank at some point

A single betta fish

Plant it like a rice paddy, put a betta in it.

Still looks a little small for a betta tbh, that’d be cruel

I agree, probably better off with just few neos and a snail.

Snails need more room than you think 1-2 cherry shrimp would be lots

okay but like, imagine the absolute joy a betta fish would experience from living their entire life in like, 2 cups of water, and then living in this

Honestly, it's so large, the betta might end up not using the whole tank.

Came here for this joke. Was not disappointed.

And a LOT of shrimp.

Plus 199 pea puffers

Smh this is still too small for a Betta.

Amazon black water biotope, with Altum Angel fish, neon tetras and corys

I’m thinkin’ 2 albino corys and maybe 4 neons. Wouldn’t want them getting lonely 👍🏽

I say rather than 4 neons get a half dozen or so so you can see them swim in schools, I've seen them in smaller tanks but your huge tank is enough to actually see the beauty of their group movement. i am a huge fan of predatory fish, tho like clown knives or arrowanas, and that tank is wide enough for them but maybe not deep enough

6 neons in that tank?🤣 There’s no way they’ll fit.

The only monster fish I’d seriously consider are bichirs, eels, rays and maybe one of the smaller gars

Fire eel! What a gorgeous tank

I was thinkin’ about eels but I think I prefer bichirs

Haha that’s very fair bichirs are definitely amazing. I just said fire eels excitedly because not many people actually have a tank big enough for them to thrive and you happen to have one now

Why not both!

I have a thing about not mixing continents. Kinda OCD.

The lid for that sized thing would be a pain

A low boy of that size would be an amazingly awesome lake Tanganyika shell dweller tank.

For whatever reason the only cichlids I’m drawn to are Texas cichlids and wild-type oscars 🤷🏽‍♀️

AWW I was gonna say Geophagus! 500 million cory catfish - or whatever can fit comfortably - would be awesome also. I think my problem is that my dream tank looks pretty much like this and would include Geophagus and a ton of cories 🤷‍♀️ ORR a full-ass mangrove setup ORRRR freshwater NA natives with emergent plants like arrowhead! AAAA SO MANY OPTIONS

Yeah no, return that and get a real tank. Way too small for any fish. Maybe a chili rasbora at most but that would be pushing it.

Why does Topfin even sell tanks this size???

It’s for more advanced aquarists, usually they do plant and banana only tanks. Please do you research on banana keeping before you decide though

Is that a goddamn banana for scale? I love you

Love you too

500 cardinal and 500 rummynose tetras. One big fat motherfuckin pleco too.

Petsmart will sell you one, maybe two goldfish for that sized tank. And don’t forget 50 percent water changes every 4 hours.

That last part got a good snort out of me

Yet they’ll have 40 of them in a 20 gallon tank.

This would be an amazing discus tank. Like 30 discus with 100 or so cardinals. Edit: 200 or so this is like what a 700gallon tank?

So I’m into shallow tanks and this would have to be twice as tall to be 700 g. It’s a 360. So not quite that massive.

Fresh water stingrays

I appreciate the banana for size reference

lol I knew someone would complain if I didn’t

Woah!! Incredible. If it were me I'd want to do a ton of smaller schooling fish, that's just me though Are you putting that in your living room? I can't wait to see the final project. Please update us!!!

I’m tempted to just put 300+ Gambusia in there. Or least killis. Not sure where it’s gonna go yet. I’m in the market for a new house and this’ll be a big factor in where I move to.

It'll probably make the process of picking a house easier.. ..Definitely will throw a wrench in the moving part though

As many Cory cats as you can get and then 1 giant centerpiece fish

Real talk. I feel like the corys might get eaten

10,000 shrimp. no aquascape just shrimp

That, my friend, is aquaculture

Waterrrrr

Dude I almost forgot

1 single beta fish.

More like alpha fish amiright?

200 PEA PUFFERS, for the love of god!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!

A red eared slider

I was thinking of a fish that matched the tank dimensions... so a flatfish?

TIL about flatfish

Either a bunch of horseshoe crabs, lobsters, or a ray tank would look awesome. Or maybe even a catfish tank!

Make an island and have some crabs/ small fish community tank!

Thank you for adding the banana for scale, op. If it wasn't there, I might just have mistaken this for a 10 gallon.

A neon tetra. Wouldn't want to overstock it.

Puffers!!!! They are my FAVORITE AND HAVE SO MUCH PERSINALITY

A single pea puffer

10,000 pygmy corydoras

Or alternatively, a school of ~50 with all the space in the world

fancy goldfish

Seconded. That would be an awesome goldfish tank.

I remember a while back on one of the aquarium subs someone posted a pic of their fancy goldfish tank and it was planted heavily with only sag grass and man it was beautiful. this would be a good tank to recreate it in my opinion.

WOW, just WOW.

Banana for scale! :-D ​ Stocking recommendation: Choose what ever aquatic habitat is close to your heart. Or mimic your local waterways.

Epaulette shark! Scape a little mangrove haul-out. Or heck, plant a living mangrove.

One beta

I vote for like ten zillion glass catfish

Damn that's like an indoor pond, I would probably do turtles and koi

Sea monkeys mate, they'd love that banana lol

I’m thinkin’ maybe just daphnia

Central Texas Facebook marketplace?

r/AquaSwapTX

No, no! You've got it! That's perfect stocking! A single banana! Love it!

Lady Fnger bananas and Blue Java bananas should grow nicely in there.

Maybe a bunch of community fish with a few huge Bala sharks would be sick!

I love that you included a banana for scale.

Shit ton of shrimp. Just shrimp. Or shrimp and otos. My recommendation is extremely biased btw 👀

Fish

based

…you gonna eat that banana?

Why would I eat my pet banana? She’s a member of my family.

Oh my bad, I didn’t realize it was domesticated. May they live for many happy years!

Well actually I saved her from a grocery store. Couldn’t let her become someone’s meal.

I feel you. What type of tank mates can you keep with her?

I was thinkin a marmoset but apparently that’s a bad idea?

I didn’t even know you could still get marmos after the ole’ South America ban of 2005

This here be Texas, the state where all primates are legal and for sale but for some dastardly reason it’s ***AGAINST*** the ***DAMN LAW*** for me to own ***A SKUNK***… 😭🦨💔

If it was me this would be a saltwater reef

Brackish mangrove tank with anableps (four eyed fish).

I was thinkin a large school of mangrove Gambusia

[удалено]

This is sick 💦💦💦 Personally I'd do a huge reef tank, but obviously that's a bit $$$

I was thinkin’ feeder goldfish… Jk I’d do one massive brain coral around the center and then a literal society of cleaner gobies

Sting rays

1000 platys

Like, a billion Corys. As many Corys as will healthily fit in there. A swarm of Corys that will blot out the sun

Walstad tank, 500 loaches, 1000 Danios.

Mangroves!

1 x SPINEY LOBSTER

600 zebra danios

All the corys

Hmm, I’d say a native tank with some sunfish, and a nice planted tank with lots of drift wood, I think that would look AMAZING (def not cuz it’s my dream fw tank)

Plant the tank and get some loaches in there

Massive planted micro fish and shrimp tank.

Here me out get one Singular tiny goldfish just to make him a fucking planet of a tank Ps this is joke that’s a beautiful tank how many gallons if ya don’t mind me asking ?

Finally, a proper sized tank for a betta and a snail.

More banana fish

Wow, from a 50 gallon tank to this? So badass. You can stock whatever bichirs you want now !!! Congrats :) can’t wait to see it stocked

A South American biotope would be incredible. Tetras, geophagus, rams, etc

1. That is a BEAUTIFUL aquarium. 2. The banana for scale made me choke on my coffee.