I’m hoping you might be able to help me, I would like some advice on what to put in a tank. I recently acquired a 24x12x17 in tank, and I’m unsure on what can thrive in there! At first I was thinking a tarantula, Betta, or dwarf hamster, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable putting a dwarf hamster in something that small. I can’t think of any reptiles I would feel to comfy living in there, though maybe you or your followers can help? Thank you!

amazingpetenclosures:

Sounds like a 20g high tank?

I single male mouse would do well in a tank that size, especially if you got creative and put the hight to use. You could probably get away with two or three female mice, but it might be a little crowded. A tarantula or other invertebrate would do great in it. You could keep small amphibians, like a few fire bellies, a packman frog, something like that. A leopard gecko, possibly, if you built levels and took advantage of the height. A few green anoles or house geckos, or similarly sized lizard. Potentially a male kenyan sandboa, but you may eventually want to upgrade. It would definitely be a good home for a betta or a number of other small fish, like a school of guppies or tetras, maybe. Crawfish might be neat.

There’s quite a few options out there, but these are what I can come up with off the top of my mind. I’m sure my followers will have suggestions, too 🙂

A single larger crawfish or multiple of a dwarf species would work, or shrimp. Do not mix, crawfish eat most other things. Would be a great home for a larger betta, a small group of wild bettas (I like B. albimarginata), a few small tetras, some guppies, a community of small fish (I’d pick tetras or rasboras + pygmy or dwarf cories, maybe a dwarf gourami), or African dwarf frogs. Don’t put the frogs with other things, either the frogs will attack the other things or the other things will bite toes off the frogs.

Dart frogs would work if you do the research into their setup, they don’t need too much space due to being tiny. Same for bumblebee toads. There are some species of small gecko in the hobby that would do just fine. 

As far as inverts, you have plenty of possibilities. A tarantula, millipedes, a centipede (careful of escapes), a scorpion, pretty much every species of roach (and there are many beautiful species or ones good for handling- I like hissers, peppered roaches, death’s head roaches, and domino roaches, though all need some research on setup and a couple are slow-growing), and/or darkling beetles. Some roaches can be combined with some darkling beetles, and other roaches can be combined with millipedes, but most other inverts should be kept separately. You could also put in a divider of some sort and keep multiple species of invert in each section.