I have a green sunfish baby that I found in a feeder tank. I won't be keeping him, since the greens get a bit aggressive, but he's cute and I'm now wanting to keep sunfish. I'm considering blackbandeds, since they're little, but we have longear sunnies in the rivers around here and I like the looks of them. Let's say I had some longear sunnies in a lightly-planted 65g. What could I keep with them?
Fish I like:
Shiners. We have blacktails all over the place around here, but I think they're a bit too active for this tank. Are there smaller shiners I could try?
Pearl gouramis. 5-6" long, peaceful shoalers, pretty things.
Glowlight tetras. Basically neon tetras, usually about an inch long. I know most sunnies would probably eat them.
Checkerboard cichlids. 3" or so, bottom dwellers, shoalers, very peaceful.
Leaf-fish. 3" or so, eat anything they can fit in their mouth (which is anything under 3"), hard to wean off live fods- would have to find one eating frozen.
Ctenopoma species. Similar to leaf-fish, wouldn't get one that gets over 4" long. Aside from the gobbling, leafies and kin are peaceful, they just kinda hover around.
African butterflyfish. 4"ish, stick to the surface, eat all small fish, peaceful aside from being gulpers.
Danios of various types. Most are a bit under 2" long, very fast, very hyper. There are giant danios, but I think they need more room.
Spotted headstanders. 3" or so, peaceful, stand on their heads, don't really appreciate boisterous-ness.
Skirt tetras. About 2" or so, tall-bodied, can be a bit nippy if there's too few of them.
I do NOT plan to keep all of these, but I'm wondering if any are suitable as tankmates for longear sunnies. Right now I'm just poking fish ideas, really.