Aloha everyone. I have a 29 gallon tank with 2 guppies, 2 swordtails, 2 mollies and 1 red tail shark. I want to add schooling fish but I'm not sure what kind and how much. I was thinking 6-8 tiger barbs or a dozen neon tetras. Any suggestions?

We have a 29 gallon tank with guppies too. We added about 5 Serpae tetras. They are quite cool to look at and school nicely.

I ended up getting 6 neon tetras and 6 cardinal tetras. The sword tails immediately picked on the tetras and I'm now down to 6 neons. They seem to get along now. So far this week I lost 7 fish, the cardinals and 1 black mollie. Tiger barbs is on the list if these neons don't make it but that also depends if my lps brings them in. Thanks for the suggestions:)

if you did add 12 all at once that is probally why you lost so many..

add three barbs at a time, not too much, but sufficient for them to not pick on other fish, if you put less than three they will pick on other fish rather than each other. And there are some barbs that are just "bullies" and will always chase others around, you can eventually pull those ones out in exchange for more docile ones.

How about mosquito fish? I used to colect them from the local lake untill I had problems with bacterial infections. Alternatively, you can get them at aquarium stores, hardware stores that sell pond supplies, and from the state for the purposes of mosquito control. They're kind of drab but they school and they're live breeders. The females are constantly livebearing and it's fun to keep a few pregnant females in a breeding cage and get hundreds of cute little tiny babies. they're fine with other community fish and they're cheap to free to aquire. Females can store sperm in their bodies for up to (I think) 12 broods but it's good to have at least some males with your females. They're easy to tell apart. The male anal fin is like a dragging stick and the female anal fin is like a fin. Pregnant females will develope a large black spot posterior and ventral when they get pregnant. I have so mant plants in my tanks that even in a tank where most of the fish eat these babies some get smart and make it to adulthood. Make sure you get ones free of parisites like ICK from an aquarium store unless you're like me who caught mine with a net from ponds and lakes and had to treat my community tanks. Problem with aquarium stores is that sometimes they only sell males. The state or hardware stores sell both sexes so you can breed them, but I can't gaurentee those fish are parisite free. If they're kept by themselves it's not a problem. They're very hardy. It's just an idea guys!