Sounds like a horrible idea imo. These fish will fight, bad. Wolf fish are horribly horribly aggressive. (I’m surprised you can see buy them where you live, they’ve been banned in my area due to people releasing them in local lakes.)

South American cichlids (Jaguar cichlid, Oscar, and the Green Terror) also do very bad with plants.

It’s also important to remember that just because they all get along fine and dandy today, doesn’t mean you won’t one day come home to find the tank destroyed and half the fish missing. Working in a aquarium store for a couple years you wouldn’t believe the amount of times I heard ”.....yea…. but they’ve been together for months and there was never an issue”

In my experience, aggressive tanks are best left as species tanks. Don’t go mixing a bunch of random fish that more than likely won’t get along, stick to one type. If you want a community tank, go non-aggressive.

In addition, some fish grow faster than others. Some are much larger than others when they’re grown. If you have a tank full of aggressive fish, the big ones will the the ones that are left.

@El_Cadejo

Ok fair enough. Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it! My roommate has been in the hobby for a long time, but this will be my first tank since some newts I had 20~ years ago. Glad I asked 1st.

So… granted, these fish won’t work together; I can respect that. Originally I was thinking to just do a species specific tank with only piranha… But knowing myself, I think I’d get bored only having one species in the tank. On the other hand, my roommate has a community tank right now and that doesn’t really do it for me either.
If I do this, I want some big fish that look cool and will be a little more interesting to watch/feed.

Can you think of any combination of larger semi-aggressive fish that would work well together?

The tank is 90 gallons BTW.

We had a lion fish that would come up and take goldfish right from your fingers. But that was the previous owner. He said it acted a lot like a dog. He said it was so tame he would scrape the algae from the glass, with his hand. and it would come up and sort of play with him. He’d push it away, scrape a bit, and it would come back and do it again. They had a real game going. Until one day it got a little too insistent. He pushed it away and got nailed with a couple poison spines. It put him in the hospital. When we inherited the fish we didn’t do those things. We just dumped the fish in the tank and watched it do its thing.

Hubby had tiger Oscars he used to do the same thing with, only they never bit him. But he did have to keep a species specific tank. They do get really big though.

@Esedess Are you set on a brackish tank? Are you open to the idea of salt water?

@snowberry You should never feed a lionfish goldfish. First you’re feedin fw fish to a sw fish, but on top of that gold fish are dirty , disease ridden fish, even if they are healthy, they’re still mostly all fat, so not all that good for the lion..

@El_Cadejo
I’m pretty set on freshwater (if those fish I mentioned require brackish water, I wasn’t aware).
But I think a marine tank is a little steep for my first attempt; and to be honest, I really like the look and process of aquascaping with plants over coral.

@Esedess Yes, those fish you mentioned above are all brackish water fish—(though most people improperly keep them in fw). As per going salt, it does not need to be expensive. Unless you are getting into coral, which you aren’t, you could get away with pretty much all the same equipment as you would use for fresh. I used to have a 40g sw tank that just had a hob filter and a light. Salt water fish do tend to be more expensive than fw but IME they are a lot longer lived and easier to care for. There are also a lot of really nice sw macro algaes and plants. Just some food for thought.

If you do decide the fw with plants route, have you decided what types of plants, I assume based on the budget you’ll be going rather simple yes? I ask because some plants require a more expensive set up than coral.

@El_Cadejo
That is some food for thought! I actually haven’t ever seen a sw tank with plants, so I didn’t even think to look into it. I see now, there’s some pretty cool ones to choose from. But everyone tells me saltwater is “SO MUCH WORK”... I was scared off that path before I even got going.
ATM, my equipment goes:
—heater
—Current USA Satellite Freshwater Aquarium LED Plus Light
—tank/stand
—100ga Marinelife filter.
(still have receipts for all)

What more would I need for sw instead?
Is it not way more work?

As for the fw plants, I mostly intended to go with java moss and some other simple stuff. I might also just purchase one of those aquatic plant packs, go nuts, and see what survives. I’m not against CO2 injections (I really like the dwarf baby tears), but I’m still very much a n00b in the planning stages so… Yea, kinda winging it.

Is CO2 injection the “more expensive set up than coral”?

@Esedess In my experience salt water isn’t way more work. I found it easier to maintain honestly. I think the “SO MUCH WORK” thing stems from this. In my experience working at the fish stores I found very few people who were actually willing to do their research. They wanted to just walk into the store and buy everything and go home that day with fish. Patience is key with aquariums. So when you buy a $2 fw fish, unfortunately a lot of people are of the mentality of “oh well, I’ll just get another”. When it’s a $30 sw fish that dies, the “I’ll get another” mentality wears down quick, then people get frustrated and quit.

The expensive part I referred to with FW is indeed the CO2 injection systems as well as some other nutrient drip systems that are required for some plants. Lights are the other big cost factor, but lighting needs would obviously depend on the plants chosen, some plants can get by with very basic lighting. Though I can’t foresee you having any issues with the light you have.

As far as the rest of your equipment goes, I think you’re good to go for either fresh or salt. The only thing I would recommend is picking up a few powerheads to create more circulation in the tank.

When it comes down to it, the only real difference between maintaining a basic sw/fw tank (I’m excluding the extra requirements needed for some plants/coral) is that when you do your water changes, you need to mix salt into the bucket first. Aside from that, it’s all pretty similar.

One final consideration that applies to both sw and fw; NEVER make an impulse buy. Yea, that fish or plant at the store can look totally amazing but refrain from buying it, go home, research the fuck out of it, and if you decide you can keep it, go back and buy it. Following this advice will save you more headaches than you can imagine(as well as a lot of money)
^Speaking from my own stupid experience with aquariums :P

Ok, so for better or worse, I’ve decided I’m just going to stick with the fw tank idea for the time being. I’ll use a chemical CO2 additive my roommate uses until I can work out the injection system.
As far as the fish go, I’ve been looking at the wolf fish a lot. Based on some research it looks like it actually does really well with live plants, and you can put other fish of the same size with it. Any advice some other cool fish I could stick with that guy?

Not sure really, I’ve 9only ever seen a few wolf fish in person and anything the store ever tried to house with them was promptly ripped to shreds.

When you get your tank all set up, I’d love to see some pictures. Good luck and always feel free to pm me with any questions you have along the way {Imay take a little while to respond though as I’m currently backpacking throughCosta Rica}