3ft tank

[krellious]

Hey guys.

I recently purchased a 3ft tank. Im thinking of putting my firemouth pair in there. im jsut wondering what else i could put with them to make the tank more active. Common bn will be added but i jsut feel like adding something else.

Thanks

[Andrew]

Hey mate,

There are so many things you can keep with Firemouths, but tell us, are you looking to breed them in there? If so, a species tank would yield the most success for you.

Cheers,

Andrew.

[krellious]

Hey mate,

There are so many things you can keep with Firemouths, but tell us, are you looking to breed them in there? If so, a species tank would yield the most success for you.

Cheers,

Andrew.

Yeah i am looking to breed them. I just want to add a bit more activity to the tank.

[Andrew]

Tankmates in with a breeding pair could cause a bit of stress with that size tank, sometimes resulting in false starts (parents eating broods), however, really good parents should be ok though.

Maybe Silver hatchet fish, which are an excellent surface-only fish that the Firemouths won't eat and that won't try to eat F/m fry. Other than that, I recommend any sort of surface-dwelling schooling fish. Perhaps a species of small native rainbowfish would be good, such as Lake Eacham RBF, or Melanotaenia maccullochi, etc. I would hesitate to add any cichlids to the mix...

[krellious]

Cool, I was hoping you mentioned rainbow fish. Time to shop around for them and maybe even breed the buggers.

[Andrew]

Lol, you won't be breeding any rainbows if they're living with Firemouths...lol

However, breeding rainbows is easy and fascinating - totally different methods to any cichlids! You could do it, but you need to set yourself up properly for it.

[dobbin4]

Interesting,

I would have thought a Lg pair F/mouth in a 3fter would kill off any hatchet fish?. And they in turn would try to eat the F/mouth fry?.

Rainbow fish would be fine but I would think they would cop a beating as well in a 3fter.Maybe a 4fter would leave an end free?.

Could be wrong. Anyway you do it your going to get activity when the Firemouth breed. What size are they?

[krellious]

they are about 8cm. they have spawned once in a tank that had my breeding catfish colonies so the eggs didnt last to long. And since then they have been in a divided 4ft and all they do is hide. I figure the 3ft would do great for them with breeding. And i can get a breeding tank that actually warrants decoration not just sand. And rainbow or soemthign may somehow help them spawn or atleast give them something to flare up against

[Andrew]

Being surface fish, the Firemouths would largely disregard the threat - and in my experience, Firemouths are not that aggressive.

The Hatchets would be less threat to the fry than rainbows, as a hatchet will never descend to the bottom of the tank and its mouth is extremely small (for example, my Marbled Hatchets enjoy microworms and baby brine shrimp).