Moved this to the correct subforum.
Now to answer your query, I would not keep the Rocket Pencilfish with the australes. As you have noticed, the australe are very aggressive towards smaller fish. I have had decent results keeping them with Neon Tetras and Rams in a community setting. You can consider a school of Flame? Danios aka Danio choprai (whichever is the correct name for it now) or some other fast moving, but non-aggressive fish. However if kept with other fin-nippers like Tiger Barbs and such, just don't expect the males to keep their long tail streamers. In their natural habitat they are occasionally found with some barbs and other African tetras. Perhaps keeping a pair of Steatocranus cichlids might be nice for a biotope setting.
The reason why I discourage keeping the Rocket Pencil with them is that the Rockets are not exactly the fastest moving Pencilfish species out there, plus they are very aggressive when kept in small groups, so a shoal of like 10-12 pieces are a necessity to reduce aggression. This applies to the other Pencilfish species as well. They might look small and "peaceful", but they are not. Male pencilfish seem to be highly territorial, and even females are not immune to bullying smaller specimens of their own species.
You can also consider keeping them with a small group of Dwarf Chain Loaches aka Yasuhikotakia? sidthimunki. I did not have much problems keeping these 2 species together BUT, don't expect to find any eggs from your australe if you have pairs in the tank. The loaches are excellent egg hunters...![]()
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