Red Tailed Black Sharks

[Gruffle]

Hi

I've been keeping fish for about 18 months now and decided to start my tank again when I moved house recently, my tank has just finished cycling judging by the readings and i have 4 danios in it at the minute.

My plan was to get a couple of red tailed black sharks, however I read on a website recently (forgot the url) that they can be very aggressive and generally nasty little fish, my LFS echoed this sentiment saying that only one should be kept in a community tank, along with other fish that can generally look after themselves, tiger barbs etc.

Is this accurate? I've been to several shops lately and they have had several sharks in a tank with quite timid fish and they seemed to get along fine, and as a kid I had a couple of sharks in with a tank of guppys and bronze corys with little issue.

Any advice would be welcome!

 

[Spishkey]

how bigs your tank? ive heard them fish can get really big!

 

[locust267]

Generally speaking they do get agressive when they are older, charging at the other fish and stressing them out until they die etc.

However saying that if you have a big tank with planty of hiding places then getting one can be a great addition to a tank.

Sometimes people are lucky by having a RTBS that leaves all the other fish alone but more often than not it ends in disaster when the RTS bullies them.

Books say that they can grow to 5" or 6" however at Bournemouth Oceanarium the ones I saw were more like 12" (this was in a big tank were they are looked after well)

Bear in mind that whilst young in the shops they will be little and chilled out but this will most definately change

 

[Gruffle]

I have a 60l tank at the minute and did have the intention of adding a few clown loaches and the shark, and then upgrading to the 155l osaka tank in a couple of months when they get bigger

I wasn't too worried about the danios, they're like lightning and i dont think they would be too bothered by a shark, i was wondering more about the loaches I want to get, with them being pretty expensive i wouldn't want them to be stressed by an aggressive tankmate.

 

[Davo86]

The bare min size recommended for RTB sharks is 50USG (189 litres) so even the osaka tank is too small long term,
As for clowns try doubling the capacity of the osaka and then you would be somewhere near the recommended size for a shoal of them. sorry.

have a look at some of the smaller loach such as chain loach, or botia dario, or botia kubotai as they would be much more suitable for the osaka,

 

[Gruffle]

Yeah, I was thinking the bigger the better as far as the tank goes

The trouble is, I live in a town house with the living room on the 2nd floor, so I'm not entirely convinced the floor would hold anything much bigger than the Osaka tank, which is a shame because I could probably get a 200L+ tank for the same price by another manufacturer

Back to the drawing board then