Angelfish And Glofish?

[Rhindon]

Hi all. I'm considering adding an angelfish or two in the next couple of weeks to my current setup below (see signature). I know there is a possibility the angelfish will eat the neons, but am hoping if I get small ones they will leave them alone since the neons are already in the tank. My question is, will the angelfish go after any of my other fish or will any of my other fish nip the angelfish?

Thanks!

 

[waterdrop]

You will want to be absolutely sure that your mini-cycle is not going to show itself prior to adding fish, but if you've had a week of double-zeros (zero ppm ammonia and zero ppm nitrite(NO2)) then you'd probably be fine to begin your introductions. I'd start by bringing your neon shoal up to minimal standards. You pretty much never want a neon shoal to drop below 6 and in your tank (without looking back at tank size) I'm thinking you could easily go 8 or 10. Not only will this help the neons relax and be more healthy and less likely to nip the other fish, it will also get them in there and established prior to the angel introductions. You have the correct idea, get small angels and introduce them after the neons and they will, at least for a very long time, consider the neons to be part of the scenery and not something to eat. Be aware however that angels are among any number of cichlids (and gouramis for that matter) which have varied personalities on an -individual- basis. The very thing that makes these fish so endearing to their owners, the individual "personality" aspects, can mean that some individuals are, at the extreme, either mean or very nice to other particular fish. Note that if it eventually does turn out to be a problem, it can be hard to spot at first. Angels eat neons as their basic food in the Amazon and what they do is glide and sit pretty still and then make a very rapid move and grab the neon whole. The shoals of neons they eat from can number in the thousands. Still, this is just to understand. I and many others have kept angels and neons for their full fish lifetimes without incident.

Hatchets might also be a problem nipping the angel fins but you'll just have to see. They too might do better in larger numbers but I would understand if you end up pushing up against your stocking ceiling (one inch of what each species could become when adult mature per US gallon not including fins, for the first year ideally, until you become much more comfortable with the maintenance, your particular tank chemistry and your particular fish personalities.) So basically, between the 3, the angels, the neons and the hatchets, you have 3 fish that could all have some potential to nip each other but most likely will not and having the neons especially and the hatchets to some extent in larger shoals would be one of the main reducers of the nipping possibilities, whereas some other aspects, such as the angel personalities, would be unpredictable but not something that should stop you I think.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Rhindon]

Thank you!

Pardon my ignorance, but what are hatchets? That's not another name for the GLOfish is it?

 

[waterdrop]

Oh! My mistake! I looked at your "black skirts" and saw "hatchets" as I tend to think of them as similar (even though they're not) because they tend to occupy a similar coloration and body shape and to some extent movement pattern in a community tank. Marbled and Silver hatchetfish are about the same size/shape as black skirts but they do tend to hug the surface more closely. I'd definately guess that hatchets could be kept in smaller numbers than black skirts...

Actually, black tetras (or black skirts as they've come to be called in recent years) can be quite mean, perhaps not quite as bad nippers as bleeding heart tetras but still potentially quite vicious on occasion. I would really recommend this shoal be increased to avoid this. I'm sure at 6 (or perhaps some other nearby "magic" number that people who keep them a lot would know) they would not be a problem. (The basic principle, as I'm sure you know or have surmised is that for nippers that are shoaling fish, once you get to the minimum "magic" number, the individuals tend to be so distracted, paying attention to their peers in their shoal, that they virtually never have time to even think about other fish in the community tank and so leave them alone.) Or, I suppose, since perhaps these came from another tank and were not your own initial choices (?) you might want to see if they could be re-homed and you could go with a different species. I forget what's considered to be the adult body size (1.5", 2"?) but it might be that a shoal of 6 would use up a considerable bit of your precious overall stocking limit.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[OldMan47]

Glofish are zebra danios that have been genetically altered by adding some jellyfish genes and then bred. Hatchets are a top swimming fish that has a flattish back designed to swim just below the water surface while the fish's body is quite deep and thin. It is sort of reminiscent of a hatchet shape. Black skirts are a common tetra that swims more in mid waters than the hatchet and are more symetric with an upcurved back as well as a down curved belly.

 

[waterdrop]

I didn't know it was jellyfish genes! How interesting! WD

 

[Rhindon]

I knew about the jellyfish genes. I think they were originally bred that way to detect contaminants in water.

 

[waterdrop]

Somehow it still gets a negative reaction in me when I see a living thing made to look like a bit like a cartoon!

 

[Rhindon]

I didn't know until after we got them that they were modified Zebra Danios. If that matters any.

 

[OldMan47]

If you like your glofish, enjoy them. We, each of us, have our own preferences in fish. For me it is wild type fish called goodeids which my wife tells me look like bait. I also recently picked up a pair of killies with full location information that are just gorgeous but I don't expect everyone to like those either. There are other people who like their cichlids, more that like BNPs, and others still who really like their highly developed fancy fish or even hybrid cichlids. I don't expect you to agree with me on the choice of fish and I don't run into many people who actually like the same type that I do. What we have in common is many of the same problems caring for our charges and we can use many of the same solutions to be successful. That makes a place like this worthwhile because I can give my goodeid keeper's answer for a cichlid keepers question and it all works to our mutual benefit.

 

[fishgirl298]

i had the same problem the other day. so what i did was buy an angelfish (not knowing if it was going to be aggressive towards my glo fish) and a cheap goldfish about the same size as my glo fish. i put just the angelfish in thetank for an hour and then added the goldfish... in my case the goldfish didn't get harmed. i left them in the tank for one day then added my glo fish and they are all fine, the glo fish stay with each other and the goldfish and angelfish stay together

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum FishGirl.
What temperature are you running that tank and how big is it? The goldfish are "cold water" fish that prefer a low temperature while the zebras and angel are warm water fish. The angel and goldfish are also going to both need large tanks to really thrive.

 

[Rhindon]

If you like your glofish, enjoy them. We, each of us, have our own preferences in fish. For me it is wild type fish called goodeids which my wife tells me look like bait. I also recently picked up a pair of killies with full location information that are just gorgeous but I don't expect everyone to like those either. There are other people who like their cichlids, more that like BNPs, and others still who really like their highly developed fancy fish or even hybrid cichlids. I don't expect you to agree with me on the choice of fish and I don't run into many people who actually like the same type that I do. What we have in common is many of the same problems caring for our charges and we can use many of the same solutions to be successful. That makes a place like this worthwhile because I can give my goodeid keeper's answer for a cichlid keepers question and it all works to our mutual benefit.

Thank you. I had been reading around and there is apparently some controversy around the Glofish so I wanetd to be clear I didn't know they were altered until after we purchased them.

 

[waterdrop]

Oh, and I didn't mean for my comment to sound negative, it was just conversational. It can be so easy for written messages to be interpreted with a different inflection, just wanted to be clear on that

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Rhindon]

Thank you Waterdrop. I appreciate that. 000000000