Scarlet Badis Care?

[lynxfishy]

Hey Everyone! 

I recently bought a 10 gallon tank on sale and wanted to stock it with 6 rocket/clown killifish, a scarlet badis, and maybe some other nano fish like green neon tetras, pygmy Cories, or khuli loaches (not quite decided there). I was wondering if it would be ok to get just 1 scarlet badis? The internet seems pretty divided on if you should keep them alone (super territorial, feisty) or if they should be in groups of 2 or 3? I am also unsure of what to feed them? I see everyone mention they don't usually take to process/flake foods, would a diet of just frozen foods (bloodworms, brine shrimp, beefheart) work or should I be hatching live baby brine shrimp and alternating with frozen food?  

[lynxfishy]

adding to this has anyone had any luck with freeze dried foods, like the cubes aquarium co op offers?

[Sarina]

I have kept Scarlet badis alone and in groups, and the one down side to keeping them alone is the fact that the males don't color up as much when they don't have another male to spar with. Unfortunately it's hard to keep a colony of them because females are few and far between in the aquarium hobby, their natural behavior when being collected causes this to happen. Female scarlet badis will run and hide when they feel a threat coming, males will defend their territory. This means that when a human approaches with a catch net, the females are long gone by the time the males are scooped up. 

That being said, in a 10 gallon I would recommend only keeping one, and I would recommend setting your tank up and letting it run for 3-4 months before adding any fish. If you can, seed it with daphnia, cyclops, seed shrimp, black worms, detritus worms, even planaria, and any other small live foods you can think of and feed a little bit of flake or powder food daily to let the populations just explode. I would also encourage you to plant this tank very heavily. This will give your scarlet badis plenty of live foods to eat while you work on getting him to eat prepared foods. Mine ate Repashy Spawn and Grow as well as frozen daphnia, but I also had cultures of live foods that I fed pretty regularly. Repashy in its powder form works great because they will pick it off the substrate and it will also help feed the live foods that exist in the tank naturally. 

Your other fish will appreciate the presence of live foods, as well 😊 I know it's a long time to wait for a tank to establish, but I promise watching a scarlet badis hunt live seed shrimp is well worth the wait. 

[Guppysnail]

On 7/24/2023 at 7:58 PM, Sarina said:

one down side to keeping them alone is the fact that the males don't color up as much when they don't have another male to spar with.

This is true. I had one male I was watching and away from his group he colored down for the duration. When put back I. His group within 10 minutes he was full blazing color. 
My black tiger badis I adopted from a friend who rehomed her group but missed one male will not display full color either. 
He is happy and healthy just not as bright. I plan on getting him a group when weather cools. 

 

On 7/24/2023 at 7:51 PM, lynxfishy said:

adding to this has anyone had any luck with freeze dried foods, like the cubes aquarium co op offers?

My scarlet badis group ate all live and ignored everything else. Same with my Badis badis group and my black tiger badis. 
 

I had my scarlet breeding group in a 20 long. I set the tank so each boy had territory with nooks and crannies and swim through caves to defend. It worked well but they are territorial. I’ll try and scrounge up my video for you. 

[Guppysnail]

Here is their territory fights. 

 

[lynxfishy]

On 7/24/2023 at 5:58 PM, Sarina said:

I have kept Scarlet badis alone and in groups, and the one down side to keeping them alone is the fact that the males don't color up as much when they don't have another male to spar with. Unfortunately it's hard to keep a colony of them because females are few and far between in the aquarium hobby, their natural behavior when being collected causes this to happen. Female scarlet badis will run and hide when they feel a threat coming, males will defend their territory. This means that when a human approaches with a catch net, the females are long gone by the time the males are scooped up. 

That being said, in a 10 gallon I would recommend only keeping one, and I would recommend setting your tank up and letting it run for 3-4 months before adding any fish. If you can, seed it with daphnia, cyclops, seed shrimp, black worms, detritus worms, even planaria, and any other small live foods you can think of and feed a little bit of flake or powder food daily to let the populations just explode. I would also encourage you to plant this tank very heavily. This will give your scarlet badis plenty of live foods to eat while you work on getting him to eat prepared foods. Mine ate Repashy Spawn and Grow as well as frozen daphnia, but I also had cultures of live foods that I fed pretty regularly. Repashy in its powder form works great because they will pick it off the substrate and it will also help feed the live foods that exist in the tank naturally. 

Your other fish will appreciate the presence of live foods, as well 😊 I know it's a long time to wait for a tank to establish, but I promise watching a scarlet badis hunt live seed shrimp is well worth the wait. 

Whoa this is so helpful! Thank you so much for taking the time to write all of this out!  I have yet to work with live food and will do some research on seeding tanks--I'll also look into frozen daphnia and spawn and grow rapashy. Right now I have the community repashy gel food some of my other aquarium fish like--maybe I'll see if they are interested in that? I was planning on doing a very heavily planted tank, similar to this aquascape below but with a 10 gallon so I was planning on waiting a while to get fish anyways. 

On 7/24/2023 at 6:25 PM, Guppysnail said:

This is true. I had one male I was watching and away from his group he colored down for the duration. When put back I. His group within 10 minutes he was full blazing color. 
My black tiger badis I adopted from a friend who rehomed her group but missed one male will not display full color either. 
He is happy and healthy just not as bright. I plan on getting him a group when weather cools. 

 

My scarlet badis group ate all live and ignored everything else. Same with my Badis badis group and my black tiger badis. 
 

I had my scarlet breeding group in a 20 long. I set the tank so each boy had territory with nooks and crannies and swim through caves to defend. It worked well but they are territorial. I’ll try and scrounge up my video for you. 

Dang, that is kind of a bummer with the coloring though, do you guys think it is possible to keep 2 males if my tank is going to be densely planted like the image below? 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7ru2tyfu0nowz7nnr0had/Screenshot-2023-07-24-at-6.33.22-PM.png?rlkey=9td7jd1i684cun3tnp68ag1l9&dl=0 ah image isn't loading, sorry it's this aquascape

On 7/24/2023 at 6:35 PM, lynxfishy said:

Whoa this is so helpful! Thank you so much for taking the time to write all of this out!  I have yet to work with live food and will do some research on seeding tanks--I'll also look into frozen daphnia and spawn and grow rapashy. Right now I have the community repashy gel food some of my other aquarium fish like--maybe I'll see if they are interested in that? I was planning on doing a very heavily planted tank, similar to this aquascape below but with a 10 gallon so I was planning on waiting a while to get fish anyways. 

Dang, that is kind of a bummer with the coloring though, do you guys think it is possible to keep 2 males if my tank is going to be densely planted like the image below? 

 

On 7/24/2023 at 6:31 PM, Guppysnail said:

Here is their territory fights. 

 

oh wow that's such interesting behavior! Hopefully none of the others were hurt! 

[Guppysnail]

On 7/24/2023 at 8:35 PM, lynxfishy said:

2 males if my tank is going to be densely planted like the image below?

Both males will argue over who gets the mountain and dense area. If you get 2 your best bet would be a mountain on either side. Neither one will want the open area. 

 

On 7/24/2023 at 8:35 PM, lynxfishy said:

Hopefully none of the others were hurt! 

No one ever got hurt because they had room to retreat and each had their own territory to defend. Sometimes they just would go at each other wanting the whole tank to themselves.