Plant & Species Compatibility
Two species share a system when their temperature, pH, and hardness ranges overlap, and when one will not eat or bully the other. These are the guides to what lives with what: tank mates, best-fish lists, and the conflicts a store shelf hides.
All 20 guides
Aquarium Fish and Plant Compatibility: What Goes With What
The mistake is rarely two fish that fight. It is a fish and a plant that want different water, or a goldfish put in with plants it will strip.
Aquarium Snails for Planted Tanks: The Useful Ones
A nerite snail grazes algae for a year and never leaves a hatching egg; a bladder snail can turn one into fifty in a month. The gap between a useful snail and a plague is mostly your leftover food.
Betta Tank Mates: What Actually Works
Most betta community-tank ideas online pair a fish that runs at 78 to 82 F with tankmates that either nip its fins or need water it does not. The list that actually works is short, and half of it is snails.
Cherry Shrimp Tank Mates: Who's Safe With a Colony
A cherry shrimp is 1.2 inches long and bite-sized to almost any fish, so the safe-tankmate list is short and mostly about mouth size. The other catch is temperature: shrimp want it cooler than most nano fish do.
Cold-Water Aquarium Fish for an Unheated Tank
The white cloud minnow does poorly in warm tropical water and does best at 60 to 72 F, which makes an unheated tank its ideal home, not a compromise.
Crested Gecko vs Dart Frog: Which Vivarium Is for You
A crested gecko wants a room-temperature tank you can open and handle; a green-and-black dart frog wants a sealed vivarium at 80 to 100 percent humidity that you only watch. Both are called beginner bioactive, and they are nearly opposite animals.
Dart Frog Safe Plants for a Bioactive Vivarium
The worry with dart frog plants is usually toxicity. It is the wrong worry: a dart frog eats springtails, not leaves. The real bars are humidity and pesticide-free.
Do Goldfish Eat Plants? What Survives a Goldfish Tank
Goldfish eat soft plants and uproot the rest, so a goldfish tank is not a place for a tender carpet. A short list of tough plants survives them, and here is why each one does.
Peaceful Community Fish That Get Along
A neon tetra and a guppy are both sold as peaceful, and keeping them in one tank still kills one of them slowly. Peaceful is only half the question; the other half is whether they want the same water.
Plants Goldfish Won't Eat (or Uproot)
A goldfish will strip a planted tank to bare stems in a weekend. Three plants survive it, for the same two reasons: leaves too tough to eat and roots too anchored to pull up.
Shrimp-Safe Plants (and the Cover a Colony Needs)
A cherry shrimp will not eat a healthy plant, so shrimp-safe is not about the plant. It is about which plants grow a colony and which arrive carrying the copper or pesticide that wipes one out.
Stocking a 10-Gallon Tank: Ideas That Actually Fit
A 10-gallon fits one small school or one centerpiece fish, plus a cleanup crew, not the dozen species beginners try to pack in. Here are four plans that actually work.
The Best Algae Eaters for a Planted Tank
No algae eater fixes a tank that makes too much algae. The best ones graze the last of it once your light and nutrients are already close, and each one clears a different algae.
The Best Bottom-Dweller Fish for a Planted Tank
A corydoras is not a tank vacuum. A bottom-dweller forages the leftover food a mid-water school misses, and the wrong one grinds its barbels off on sharp gravel within a month.
The Best Centerpiece Fish for a Nano Tank
A nano tank holds one centerpiece, not a community. The three fish that carry a 5 to 10 gallon on their own, and the school you pick when you want movement instead.
The Best Fish for a Planted Tank
A goldfish strips a planted tank to bare stems in a week. The best planted-tank fish do the opposite: they leave the plants alone and suit the soft, warm water most aquarium plants want.
The Best Hard-Water Aquarium Fish
Hard tap water, GH above 12 and pH near 8, is not a problem to fix. It is a stocking list you have not read yet: livebearers and a few others want exactly what comes out of a limestone-region tap.
The Best Nano Fish for Small Tanks
Nano fish is a real category with a hard ceiling: under about 1.5 inches adult, in a 5 to 10 gallon tank. Most fish sold as nano, like the neon tetra, actually want 10-plus gallons and get too restless for a 5.
The Best Soft-Water Aquarium Fish
A neon tetra in hard, alkaline tap does not die on day one. It fades over a month. Soft water fish want the opposite: low hardness and a pH under 7.0.
What Fish Can Live With Shrimp?
The honest answer: adult cherry shrimp survive with small, peaceful fish, but shrimplets get eaten. The real question is which fish let the colony grow anyway.
Check the parameters yourself
Parameters pulled live from the compatibility database.
- fish · territorial · beginner
- Temp 78 to 82 F · pH 6.5 to 7.5
- Min 5 gal · adult 2.5 in
- shrimp · peaceful · beginner
- Temp 65 to 78 F · pH 6.5 to 8
- Min 5 gal · adult 1.2 in
- fish · peaceful · beginner
- Temp 70 to 81 F · pH 5.5 to 7
- Min 10 gal · adult 1.2 in
- fish · peaceful · beginner
- Temp 72 to 79 F · pH 6 to 7.5
- Min 20 gal · adult 2.5 in
- snail · peaceful · beginner
- Temp 72 to 82 F · pH 7 to 8.5
- Min 5 gal · adult 1 in
- fish · peaceful · beginner
- Temp 72 to 82 F · pH 6 to 7.5
- Min 10 gal · adult 2 in
One build breakdown a week.
A stocked, balanced setup pulled apart: the plants, the cleanup crew, the parameters, and where it would go wrong. Free.
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