Galaxy Rasbora With German Rams

Hi, welcome to the forum 

That's a nice big tank for starting with 


Before discussing any fish, you need to find out how hard your water is. Your hardness (also called general hardness) should be somewhere on your water company's website. Look for a number and the unit rather than vague words. The unit is important as they could use any of half a dozen units (UK water companies often use mg/l calcium, for example)

The reason I ask is because there are fish that need soft water, fish that need hard water and fish that are quite happy in the middle.
German rams need soft water. So do Microdevario kubotai (the green kubotia rasboras). Galaxy rasboras (now called celestial pearl danios) can live in water from soft to quite hard. Corydoras are also soft water fish.
So all the fish you name are happy in or need soft water.

The difficult fish is the rams, simply because they need warmer water than most fish can cope with so they do restrict the other fish you can keep with them. Just about all cories need water cooler than rams, for example.
You would be able to set up a nice community if you could persuade your partner to like another species  If you want a dwarf cichlid, there are plenty of species to choose from - Bolivian rams (which admittedly are less colourful than rams), Apistogrammas, Nannacaras etc.




One comment - it is not a good idea to keep loaches and cories in the same tank. It would be best if you chose one or the other rather than both.



What do you have on the bottom of the tank? Both cories and loaches, being bottom dwellers, need sand. So do rams and Bolivian rams......

Temperature-wise, “Galaxy Rasboras” and Blue Rams are incompatible. Blue Rams really should be kept in the 80s which is too high for a lot of fish. They will seriously restrict your choices for tankmates.

Hi Sue,

Thanks for your quick response and for welcoming me to the community! I am super excited to be starting this journey!

The bottom of the tank is plant soil covered with black sand.
I believe the hardness is borderline hard...though I’m not sure of a number so will go investigate.

I think a look into other, more appropriate dwarf cichlids is a good path to take, so thanks for your suggestions for other avenues I had heard that dwarf cichlids might see small fish as foods so glad you think they can be community compatible.

Why are loaches and corys not good together? Is it competition in the same area?

Thanks for your help!
Joanna

Welcome to the forum, Joanna. 

The shop "keeping fish at a certain hardness so they'll be OK in yours" is a myth.
Fish have evolved over many thousands of years, and tank bred for only a few decades. It takes longer than a few decades to change what evolution has spent so long achieving. Having said that, commercial breeding will select for those individuals which can cope with parameters outside their native water. The fry that can't cope will die leaving those that can cope for future breeding.
It doesn't matter what the shop's water is like, it is the water where the fish were bred that is important. For commercially raised fish, this is the fish farm; for wild caught fish it is their native water. We can never know what the water parameters at fish farms are.


Looking at your list:
Celestial pearl danios hardness 5 to 15, so fine
Honey gouramis 2 to 15 so fine
Corydoras trilineatus 1 to 12, so right on the edge
Bolivian ram 1 to 10, so your water is slightly too hard.
Shrimps will also be fine, but be aware that amanos, being largish shrimps, can intimidate smaller species.


One thing you could do is to use some reverse osmosis water. This is water that has had all dissolved things removed. You can buy it from fish shops or get the equipment to make your own. Unlike pH, hardness is a linear scale, which means if you use half tap water and half RO, the hardness will be halved. In your case you would only need to use about 10 to 15% RO. But you would have to use this mix at every single water change, for ever, and would add an extra cost over the years.

Are you absolutely set on Bolivian rams? Apistogramma cacatuoides, the cockatoo cichlid, and A. borelli are fine in hardness up to 15 ppm. And these fish can be kept as harems with 1 male, several females. They just need one cave per female plus one extra to give them some choice. A cave can be anything from a natural rock with a hole, to plastic caves to upturned terracotta flowerpots with a hole in the rim.
If you really do want Bolivians, they are very hard to sex until they start to breed. And they must choose their own partners. I can let you know what to look for which while not guaranteed will help in choosing a bonded pair.



And in the size tank yours is, I'd go for 20 celestial pearl danios 

To throw a wild card - I know the body shape is not the same as rams but what do you think about peacock gudgeons (aka peacock gobies, you'll see both names used)? https://www.thinkfish.co.uk/fish/peacock-goby.html Your water is perhaps a tad too hard, but I have them in water right on the lower end of their range.

I have hard water, and use RO in some of my tanks. The down side to that is always having to have a container of RO around the house in case of emergencies, though the up side is having a good excuse to go to the fish store every week to get the RO. 

I wouldn’t call a GH of 11 hard, I’d call it borderline. Most soft water fish (not blackwater fish) will be fine in it. Many need soft water for breeding, but they can easily adapt to it otherwise. A moderate hardness isn’t actually a big issue for softwater fish because all that happens is their osmotic system rests. It’s the other way round, hard fish in soft water, that causes problems because their osmotic system has to stop resting and suddenly work hard, which it has evolved out of.

These are all small and very peaceful for cichlids... 

From South America there’s Laetacara, Bolivians, Blue Rams (need it hotter), some Apistos (never had much dealings with them), and then there’s the small ones... Dicrossus, Crenicara, Taeniacara.

From Africa you have Anomalochromis thomasi, Nannacara, Nanochromis, and even the smaller Pelvicachromis, like P. roloffi and P. subocellatus, although they might not be all that friendly if they breed.

If you don’t want breeding, keep the temperature in the low half of their range.