Nano Fish for a micro predator tank

[memorywrangler]

I’m thinking about putting together a  heavily planted “nano predator tank”.  It would be stocked with micro predator nano fish.

Candidates include:

1. Pea puffers
2. Scarlet Badis or tiger badis
3. Indostomus paradoxus (aka armored stickleback, aka alligator toothpick fish)
4. Sparkling gouramis
5. Pygmy sunfish 
6. Fresh water pipe fish
7. What else?

has anyone kept any of these fish together? How did it go? Any other stocking ideas?

 

 

Edited January 17, 2023 by memorywrangler
Fix photos. add pipefish

[Theplatymaster]

i dont know alot about most  of these, but pea puffers do best alone.

[TheSwissAquarist]

Most of the predators I can think of are big… but some kind of killifish are aggressive, as are some wild type (mahachaiensis, etc) bettas. Have you thought about a pipefish? 

[Patrick_G]

I’m having a hard time picturing this. My gut says that the aggressive, shoaling Pea Puffers would probably attack the smaller, more solitary species. If the smaller fish do survive I doubt you’ll see them much. 
Another issue might be the differing temperature preferences among the fish you’ve selected. 
 

[TheSwissAquarist]

I can see sparkling gouramis and sunfish working out, but the rest…

[memorywrangler]

pipefish are an excellent idea.

[memorywrangler]

On 1/17/2023 at 9:54 AM, Patrick_G said:

I’m having a hard time picturing this. My gut says that the aggressive, shoaling Pea Puffers would probably attack the smaller, more solitary species. If the smaller fish do survive I doubt you’ll see them much. 
Another issue might be the differing temperature preferences among the fish you’ve selected. 
 

Maybe not pea puffers then...

On 1/17/2023 at 9:57 AM, TheSwissAquarist said:

I can see sparkling gouramis and sunfish working out, but the rest…

Do you mean with the pea puffers or with the others as well?

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 1/17/2023 at 7:37 PM, memorywrangler said:

Maybe not pea puffers then...

Do you mean with the pea puffers or with the others as well?

Without the pea puffers. Just gouramis and sunfish. 

Sorry to Pooh-Pooh everything! 

[Odd Duck]

I would definitely skip the pea puffers.  They are notoriously bad about behaving around each other and around other fish.  If you have a large enough tank with enough peas and enough other species, it seems to be a bit more likely to work, but you would always risk your other fish having pea puffer size nips out of their fins.  Even in the wild, the other fish in their native areas will end up with pea puffer sized bites out of their fins.

Your list is certainly interesting but you have a pretty wide range of sizes.  Size range isn’t necessarily a good thing in predator tanks, whether micro or macro.  You also have a big range in temperament with the Pygmy sunfish having a far bolder personality from my understanding.  Now, this comes from someone who has read up on all these fish but I’ve only kept pea puffers and none of the other species.  But each species did intrigue me enough that I went down rabbit holes with every single species you’ve listed.  Oddly, if you take the sunfish and pea puffers out, I think you’ve got a variety that might do pretty well together but it’s likely to be a fairly quiet tank.  Like a, “sit and observe close up for hours before you see everybody”, kind of tank.  I think the gouramis are likely to end up top dog compared to the rest of the list (without the sunfish or puffers).

Hopefully someone with actual experience with some of the species will chime in for you.  Mine is reading only but a very, very interesting list.  Unconventional enough it might actually work.

[Comradovich]

Here's the deal with Scarlet Badis:

1. We call them "Pretty Hate Machines" for a reason. That reason is not just because they resemble the album cover.

2. What you have in the picture is a dominant male, he's colored up to breed. The other time he colors up is right before he dies of old age, (the one last hurrah). Average life expectancy is only around 2 yrs, so you don't always know why your fish is coloring up.

3. He's going to stake out a territory usually around one big plant or marimo moss ball and then take on all comers to defend that territory. He only really colors up once he has a territory. If something else in the tank fights back, he's probably going to lose that confrontation. He's very small, and fights like a drunk Yorkshire Terrier. Imagine a Jack Demsey that only gets to a half of an inch long. Mine for some reason considered Otocinclus and pygmy cories to be a potential threat, he spent a lot of his day driving them off.

4. Females are almost impossible to find. Instead, you most likely have non-dominant males. These are identical to females. Best advice to get a female if you try to breed is to buy a few "USA bred" or "Hobbyist bred" fish. Importers are going for the most colorful fish, they often cull all of the females from a shipment. If it's an import, it's almost certainly male. Once they've worked out which one of them is dominant... the non-dominant males have an annoying tendency to start dying off. It can get expensive.

5. Best advice if you want a few... get something with a decent footprint, like a 20 L or a 40 breeder, then put plantings and rocks all around the tank, with decent sized hardscape in between to break up line of sight. You want to create a tank full of small territories that don't really face each other. It's like having cichlids, but on a much smaller scale. Look at people who keep apistogrammas for inspiration.

You can feed frozen daphnia to keep them healthy, they don't just require live food. Problem is that if you take a three day vacation, you might come back to a dead fish. Did he starve? Was he at the end of his life anyway? Is there a disease I need to treat? Fattening them up seemed like a solid strategy, and yet I was still left with a weird crime scene investigation once I got back. Fascinating little fish, but jeez does it require your constant attention. I doubt I'll ever keep them again.

[Guppysnail]

On 1/18/2023 at 5:58 PM, Comradovich said:

Pretty Hate Machines

I agree with everything said in this entire post. Mine are crazy and would not do well with other fish. They even try to bully panda Cory 3x their size. 
only difference mine only eat live food. I’ve tried everything else. No takers. 

Edited January 18, 2023 by Guppysnail

[The endler guy]

On 1/17/2023 at 8:55 AM, Theplatymaster said:

i dont know alot about most  of these, but pea puffers do best alone.

Yay also a lot of these are very particular with tank conditions and feeding

On 1/17/2023 at 1:30 PM, memorywrangler said:

pipefish are an excellent idea.

Not sure your expertise level but I’ve even heard @Corysay that they are extremely difficult even for the most advanced aquarists 

On 1/17/2023 at 2:23 PM, TheSwissAquarist said:

Without the pea puffers. Just gouramis and sunfish. 

Sorry to Pooh-Pooh everything! 

Hey I’d just go this is native fish, sunfish and MADTOMS!!!! 

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 1/19/2023 at 12:34 AM, Aiden Carter said:

Not sure your expertise level but I’ve even heard @Corysay that they are extremely difficult even for the most advanced aquarists 

Living in low brackish conditions, living off BBS, but look and breed like seahorses. Saw it in one of my fish reference books and found out it can live in a 20 litre agarium (6 gal) 

[Odd Duck]

On 1/18/2023 at 4:58 PM, Comradovich said:

Here's the deal with Scarlet Badis:

1. We call them "Pretty Hate Machines" for a reason. That reason is not just because they resemble the album cover.

2. What you have in the picture is a dominant male, he's colored up to breed. The other time he colors up is right before he dies of old age, (the one last hurrah). Average life expectancy is only around 2 yrs, so you don't always know why your fish is coloring up.

3. He's going to stake out a territory usually around one big plant or marimo moss ball and then take on all comers to defend that territory. He only really colors up once he has a territory. If something else in the tank fights back, he's probably going to lose that confrontation. He's very small, and fights like a drunk Yorkshire Terrier. Imagine a Jack Demsey that only gets to a half of an inch long. Mine for some reason considered Otocinclus and pygmy cories to be a potential threat, he spent a lot of his day driving them off.

4. Females are almost impossible to find. Instead, you most likely have non-dominant males. These are identical to females. Best advice to get a female if you try to breed is to buy a few "USA bred" or "Hobbyist bred" fish. Importers are going for the most colorful fish, they often cull all of the females from a shipment. If it's an import, it's almost certainly male. Once they've worked out which one of them is dominant... the non-dominant males have an annoying tendency to start dying off. It can get expensive.

5. Best advice if you want a few... get something with a decent footprint, like a 20 L or a 40 breeder, then put plantings and rocks all around the tank, with decent sized hardscape in between to break up line of sight. You want to create a tank full of small territories that don't really face each other. It's like having cichlids, but on a much smaller scale. Look at people who keep apistogrammas for inspiration.

You can feed frozen daphnia to keep them healthy, they don't just require live food. Problem is that if you take a three day vacation, you might come back to a dead fish. Did he starve? Was he at the end of his life anyway? Is there a disease I need to treat? Fattening them up seemed like a solid strategy, and yet I was still left with a weird crime scene investigation once I got back. Fascinating little fish, but jeez does it require your constant attention. I doubt I'll ever keep them again.

I had scarlet badis for a very short time so I don’t count that as “keeping”.  I tried very hard to get 2 females and a single male.  I had 2 subs and a dom. It didn’t work out well for anybody despite heavily planted and an extremely tight lid.

I had not heard the “Pretty Hate Machines” nickname.  Much akin to the “Murder Beans” nickname for pea puffers. Peas are even more filled with hate than the scarlet badis but they are equipped with larger, sharper teeth.

I tried several times to integrate my first, rescued pea puffer male into a shoal.  No good.  The last time I tried, within seconds he grabbed the other most dominant male by the back and shook him like a rag doll!  No permanent damage done except to my psyche.  😳😆  I was prepped to catch him back out but I expected excessive sparring, not an immediate beat down!

I still have a few peas. If they had gone in the darn fish trap they would be gone by now. I’m going to have to tear the tank apart to get them out but that’s in their near future even though they don’t know it yet.

[The endler guy]

I do think madtoms would be a pretty cool micro predator, they look like tiny channel catfish!