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I have a 5-gallon (19 liters) fish tank, with two neon tetras in it, and I am going to Petco in the future to get more fish. I was thinking about more neon tetras and some sort of bottom feeder. Are there any bottom feeders small enough to fit in this tank and be comfortable, as well as compatible with non tetras?
The bottom feeder would be preferred to be native to the Amazon region, since that is where the tetras are from, and I want to be as accurate as possible.
The tank you have is too small for keeping more than a couple of tetras and a few shrimps or snails.
If you want to make a copy of the fishes natural living conditions, there is no other possible solution than to get a larger tank, it is possible to make this in a tank that is 100 liters+.
A larger tank is a lot easier to maintain a good water quality and it will give you some room for making errors and still keeping the fish alive.
When you get a new tank it needs to be cycled properly, please take a look here on how to do this. You can use some of the filter material from your old tank to seed the new tank; it will still take time, but it is a good start.
I had a bowl with fish, and with long lasting efforts I made it quite successful. It is not recommended, but it can be done.
Why not recommended? Simply because the environment is too small, and the fish do not have enough space to move. It is like a jail for them.
As bottom feeders, I had a small school of albino corydoras. They are social, so you should have several of them, I remember a rule of about minimum of six - otherwise they get lonely. They do their job all the time, being busy scavenging. They never attacked anyone, and they are quite robustly build (even though small) so there are small chances to be attacked by other fish. I had them for the entire life of the bowl - about 6 years - and the same school from the beginning was there all the time, no replacements made.
As bottom dwellers I also had ancistrus - I liked them for their shape and colors.
I had tetras, betta, occasionally guppy, others. I never noticed any fights and any damaged fish.
