mixing species

[Ted L. Dutcher]

Is it safe to have a mixed species tank? MALES ONLY?

I find myself ending up with more males than females and would like to set up one larger tank with ONLY the the excess males. Currently I have too many male spec. Ampah, Parvulus, and now Opallios. Could they all be kept together or would I end up with species wars? NO females of any type would be present or even visible.

Breeding these fish will be difficult if even possible in smaller tanks (5 gallon) with the extra males fighting for the females….except for the small parvulus tank which does have an extra male, not dominent and he knows his place.

Has anyone tried this?

Side note don’t worry I would never do a mixed female tank due to similarities.

[helene schoubye]

I have the same kind of problem, – as I mentioned I have too many harveyi males and other species have some times been a problem. I dont have very much experience with mixing, but at the moment I have some harveyi males and a linkei male sharing a 60 liter. That is going quite well really.
The linkei is visibly thriving better than in the smaller one pair tanks, he is big, healthy, up front, eager to feed and dont seem to be in competition with the harvey males, – never seen any confrontations between them 🙂
The harveyi probably do less good – the males of one species seem to have a constant thing going on where they have to determine who is nr. one, so I dont see all of them looking as if they are feeling quite confortable. For this reason a bigger tank is really good for this, the more space the better.
This tank is also inhabited by one lonely female albimarginata – without problems 🙂

[Peter Finke]

1. In nature we only know of three cases with two different Paro-species ocurring in the same habitat at different ecological niches: the one is anjunganensis and ornaticauda, the other is opallios and linkei, and the third is bintan and deissneri on Bintan-island at least in one of the known localities. In all these cases (especially the first two) these species differ to quite a remarkable extent one from the other. All other species occur singly in a river system of their own, only accompagnied by other fish. There are some unclear relations in parts of Western Malaysia (Kota Tinggi region) concerning the ocurrence of tweediei, alfredi and spec. Kota Tinggi, but this is additionally made difficult by the man-made modifications of landscape and water management.

2. In the aquarium it is advisable to keep all species separated especially because of the females (as is underlined by Ted and Helene, too). If you want to or must keep males of different species together this certainly is possible because of the very similar ecological needs, but it depends on the dimensions of the tank, of course, to avoid constant quarrels and other problems. Every male needs a cave and a district of the tank for its own if the animals should be kept in rather naturak a way. Of course, many breeders have the problem to keep growing young fish in the same tank for rather long a time, but the more they grow the motto is: the larger the better. But in principle it is possible to keep males of different species in one tank together. Mostly there are no more problems (but sometimes less) than keeping to much males of the same species in too small a tank.

[Ted L. Dutcher]

My plan is a 20 gallon long tank (approx 75 liters) for 10 male paros with plenty of cover and hiding spots..

The reason is I have 5 male Spec Ampah’s, one extra male Parvulus and approx 5 male Opallios, and need to get them out of the smaller breeding tanks, and it would be much easier to maintain them in one tank.

As soon as I get a good count on the females I would have a good system to provide guaranteed pairs available to those here in the US.

[helene schoubye]

After this discussion here I was thinking about my 60 liter harvei male / one linkei male tank, – and I realized I had not paid too much attention to providing good options for them to have caves or territories, – and I often did see fish in this kind of threathening brownish/ grey colour, – as if they always had to quarrel and show off.
So I decided to put in a lot of these small film cans, in fact I put in five :), and its really amazing to see how this has affected them all. Of course theres still some quarrel, but the colours are now much more bright and deep, not so much this greyish agressive, more like full colours (which to me look less stressing ? ) And it is so obvious that they are so interested, they move around the tank, and up in the more open water, not hiding so much, – it does seem to me that its good for them to suddenly have ‘a meaningfull activity’ 🙂
And theres fish in most of the cans 🙂 .. very funny actually.

[Stefanie Rick]

Very pleasant observation, Helene! Nice to think that they feel better, having something to do now ……….
(and somehow surprising for me – I would have thought that it might increase aggression to give them caves to guard ….)

[helene schoubye]

Yes, I know, – I think I thought so too.
But without a cave the fish actually has nothing to ‘defend’ and might be just stressed, I quess.

With the cave he is positively defending something which obviously is important. And it also of course has to do with that the male now can retreat into his ‘home’ and relax, feeling good – and most of the times the fishes just stand there in the can 🙂

[Author]

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