Planning a green sunfish tank

I've had a 55 gal for about 5 years now, and am tired of tropical fish. I want to redo it to a green sunfish/lake/stream biotope type tank.
I plan to have 1-5 green sunfish and need help on choosing the tank mates.
I would like to have a school or two of nice minnows that wont end up as food, and that occur in the same lake or environment.
also something to keep the algae in check(flagfish?, crawdad? IDK..)

I have been reading on this and other site about them and they just seem to be really cool.
Does anyone have any pointers on the tankmates or decor.

ps it would really help if i could buy the fish from zimmermans, jonahs, btdarter, aquabid, or http://livingaquatic.com/index.php

Greens are awesome, you cannot go wrong, especially for a starter fish. Their only draw back is they are quite aggressive at times. Keep them well fed, plenty of hiding spaces of rock and wood, and use the African cichlid method. More than one, less than five and you might end up with one good green and the rest missing scales and fins.

You are going to need a tough minnow type fish to hang with greens. Goldens would be my choice, but they need to be big and can still have greens get the better of them. Creek chubs, pearl dace, horny head chubs and other bulky chub like minnows that are five inches plus should be able to handle the greens no problem. I have used pearl dace and golden shiners in the past as good for cleaning algae and unwanted duck weed ( scourge) from the tank, along with a stocking of sunfish.

This heavy bio-load will require good water quality, and really the only way to achieve that is partial water changes at the very least every few weeks. Do about 25% each time. If you have chlorinated water, it might help to age water in a 55 gallon plastic barrel. Just fill that barrel after topping your tank off each time, and within a week it should be good to go to add to your tank when you empty the dirty water out of it.

Thanks choupique

I really like the pearl dace and it gets to about 6" the only problem i can see with those is i cant seem to find any available now

I just found the Blacktail Shiner, Cyprinella venusta which seems to be the best option.
I also like the Central stoneroller, Campostoma anomalum as a bottom feeder


I went to the SC aquarium and saw the Cyprinella pyrrhomelas, fieryblack shiner on display and thought it was the coolest fish ive ever seen, they reach 11cm~4.3in
Eventhough they aren't necessarily found in the same area of the country together do they seem to be able to live with the green sunfishes?

Edited by RandyAssassin, 12 January 2009 - 09:55 AM.