So I recently got a 30 gallon -talll- tank and I don't know what to put in it, any ideas

-saltwater is outside my expertise and I don't want to try that yet

- preferably community ideas

30 gallon is not a very big tank.

1. Check the water quality you have. Depending if it is "hard" water with a high degree of water hardness or not, you can choose from different kinds of fish.

2. Will you put life plants inside for a good water quality or just stick with plastic parts and do water exchanges every other day?

3. You can choose from a bigger group of small fish or just with 2-3 bigger fish ( size of your hand)

4. For beginners I can recommend the good old gold fish.... or any of their varieties.

They are easy keepers, very communicating and colorful as you can think off.

If you are not a beginner, check the YouTube videos about aquascaping to get some ideas 😉

Like Kiwi said, plants help the oxygen levels in the tank. I would recommend getting a few plants.

All of these fish/frogs get along in an aquarium together.

- Guppies are super cool freshwater fish(you need at least 3)

- Mollies(Same as guppies, you need at least 3)

- African dwarf frogs(at least 2)

- Nerite snails

- Tetras(at least 6)

Make sure you do research on how much your tank can hold. Overcrowding the tank could kill the fish and mess up the oxygen, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate levels(I made that mistake). If you decide to get dwarf frogs, let me know! I have two of them :)

I know you can use spring or distilled water for freshwater tanks, I've tried both. I would recommend spring water. When I tried distilled, it messed up the ammonia and oxygen levels in my tank.

If you want to go with Guppies or Mollies you have to be aware that they love to breed and if you have floating plants with a lot of roots in your tank, you will make sure that the babies are able to come up ( instead of getting eaten by the bigger fish)

So you´d better start with just a small amount of them.

I know its not a very big tanks which is why I'm not sure what to put in it,

That's the one thing that puts me off guppies and mollies is that they breed a ton and I feel like they'd overpopulate,

I was thinking of going with aquatic plants but I do have to watch plenty of videos as all my current tanks are not live planted, (2 10 gal bettas and a 5 gal betta)

We usually go buy spring water from the store since they're smaller tanks so I'm not sure the quality of our water here, trash id assume it being city,

I would put a few glow tetras. they are nice and grow about 2inches long. rule of thumb is 1in adult size per galon maximum. so about 4-5 of those max. but they are nice under a blacklight and look super cool especially if you have the blacklight and some specialized stuff that glows under it.

I have a few and they are pretty hardy as well. as long as you have a filter ect.