Aggressive tank help
- Thread starter JarreT329
- Start date
Bala sharks need to be kept in groups of 5+, a 40 gal. tank is not big enough for 1 bala, let alone 5.
As with balas, tinfoil barbs need groups of 5+, and not even 1 fish would be comfortable in a 40 gal. topping out at 14" as adults.
I just googled silver tip shark catfish, and columbian shark is what came up in the search. Assuming that's what you're talking about:
1) they will quickly outgrow a 40 gal. tank, reaching up to 2 feet in length. Even 1 of these fish will require a very large tank, because not only do they get large but they are very active fish. I have heard stories from keepers of columbian sharks about them breaking the glass on heaters and putting cracks in the tank due to their size and activity level.
2) They require brackish water, which your tinfoil barbs and balas will not be able to live in.
Please don't try to put any of these fish in your 40 gallon, especially not all together. I can promise that you would end up with cramped, stunted, sickly, stressed and eventually dead fish. It's just plain cruel to them not to mention a waste of your money.
If you're interested in aggressive fish, a 40 gal tank would be a great environment for a pair of jewel cichlids. They are beautiful, tenacious little fish with tons of personality and topping out around 6" would be a great fit for a 40 gal. tank. They are not easy to sex, so you're best off buying 4-6 juveniles and keeping them in the tank until you get a pair, and then returning the others, as breeding jewels are extremely territorial and can and will likely harass any other fish in the tank to death.
Or, you could do a couple convicts, they're pretty much in the same camp as the jewels.
As with balas, tinfoil barbs need groups of 5+, and not even 1 fish would be comfortable in a 40 gal. topping out at 14" as adults.
I just googled silver tip shark catfish, and columbian shark is what came up in the search. Assuming that's what you're talking about:
1) they will quickly outgrow a 40 gal. tank, reaching up to 2 feet in length. Even 1 of these fish will require a very large tank, because not only do they get large but they are very active fish. I have heard stories from keepers of columbian sharks about them breaking the glass on heaters and putting cracks in the tank due to their size and activity level.
2) They require brackish water, which your tinfoil barbs and balas will not be able to live in.
Please don't try to put any of these fish in your 40 gallon, especially not all together. I can promise that you would end up with cramped, stunted, sickly, stressed and eventually dead fish. It's just plain cruel to them not to mention a waste of your money.
If you're interested in aggressive fish, a 40 gal tank would be a great environment for a pair of jewel cichlids. They are beautiful, tenacious little fish with tons of personality and topping out around 6" would be a great fit for a 40 gal. tank. They are not easy to sex, so you're best off buying 4-6 juveniles and keeping them in the tank until you get a pair, and then returning the others, as breeding jewels are extremely territorial and can and will likely harass any other fish in the tank to death.
Or, you could do a couple convicts, they're pretty much in the same camp as the jewels.
Play with your numbers on aqadvisor.com. See what problems come up.
Edit: I took the liberty of looking up your three fish in a 40 gallon long on aqadvisor.com:
# Warning: Tinfoil Barb is not recommended for your tank - it may eventually outgrow your tank space, potentially reaching up to 12 inches.
# Warning: At least 5 x Tinfoil Barb are recommended in a group.
# Warning: Bala Shark is not recommended for your tank - it may eventually outgrow your tank space, potentially reaching up to 12 inches.
# Warning: At least 5 x Bala Shark are recommended in a group.
# Warning: Shark Catfish is not recommended for your tank - it may eventually outgrow your tank space, potentially reaching up to 14 inches.
# Warning: Shark Catfish requires brackish water.
You may want to look into other fish.
Edit: I took the liberty of looking up your three fish in a 40 gallon long on aqadvisor.com:
# Warning: Tinfoil Barb is not recommended for your tank - it may eventually outgrow your tank space, potentially reaching up to 12 inches.
# Warning: At least 5 x Tinfoil Barb are recommended in a group.
# Warning: Bala Shark is not recommended for your tank - it may eventually outgrow your tank space, potentially reaching up to 12 inches.
# Warning: At least 5 x Bala Shark are recommended in a group.
# Warning: Shark Catfish is not recommended for your tank - it may eventually outgrow your tank space, potentially reaching up to 14 inches.
# Warning: Shark Catfish requires brackish water.
You may want to look into other fish.
Last edited:
+ one SonofaGun
ummm yeah the fish you listed get far too big for your tank aggression is not the issue its size after its size its group size then its aggressive
so i keep jewels umm they arnt that aggressive and are actually fairly easy to sex over two inches i like mine but i wouldn't try to pair them the males beat the females almost to death when they breed if you are breeding you need to watch the tank and remove the male after he fertilizes the eggs then you get like two hundred fry its a pain
if you want something aggressive i would try to do a malowi community tank (African cichlids) you could house up to twenty in that tank but i would start with ten
go to your lfs look at the tank of assorted African cichlids and pick the ones you like best (the blue ones with the black stripes are a bad choice even though they will have tons of them they are a bit too mean and will end up killing your other fish off they are called kenyi)
so yeah hope this was helpful
convicts are also a bad choice for a forty gallon tank i cant remember if you said gallon or liter if it is a forty liter tank that is only about thirteen gallons right? if so you can house about five African cichlids
hope this helps
btw convicts are south American and get too big for either forty gallons or forty liters
ummm yeah the fish you listed get far too big for your tank aggression is not the issue its size after its size its group size then its aggressive
so i keep jewels umm they arnt that aggressive and are actually fairly easy to sex over two inches i like mine but i wouldn't try to pair them the males beat the females almost to death when they breed if you are breeding you need to watch the tank and remove the male after he fertilizes the eggs then you get like two hundred fry its a pain
if you want something aggressive i would try to do a malowi community tank (African cichlids) you could house up to twenty in that tank but i would start with ten
go to your lfs look at the tank of assorted African cichlids and pick the ones you like best (the blue ones with the black stripes are a bad choice even though they will have tons of them they are a bit too mean and will end up killing your other fish off they are called kenyi)
so yeah hope this was helpful
convicts are also a bad choice for a forty gallon tank i cant remember if you said gallon or liter if it is a forty liter tank that is only about thirteen gallons right? if so you can house about five African cichlids
hope this helps
btw convicts are south American and get too big for either forty gallons or forty liters
@Marcy,
Any particular reason why convicts would be a bad choice for a 40g? They don't get too large (4-6 inch). The downfall I see is because of their aggressiveness you could probably only keep four in a 40 (considering 2xbreeding pairs) and not much else. Or would it be because they breed like rabbits, causing a fast overpopulation?
(Not a challenge, just asking. I've never kept em.)
Any particular reason why convicts would be a bad choice for a 40g? They don't get too large (4-6 inch). The downfall I see is because of their aggressiveness you could probably only keep four in a 40 (considering 2xbreeding pairs) and not much else. Or would it be because they breed like rabbits, causing a fast overpopulation?
(Not a challenge, just asking. I've never kept em.)
1 is breeding they get super beyond aggressive when they mate.
2 is they breed like crazy
3 is they are territorial and claim space along the bottom there is not enough area in the bottom of a 40g
4 6" is a pertty big fish, and they are messy eaters to boot
they are also pretty aggressive
they are super hearty and fish breeders and such frequently use them to cycle tanks for fish in cycles (people with 100+ tanks)
200 fry per batch a batch every 21 days.... get the problem?
2 is they breed like crazy
3 is they are territorial and claim space along the bottom there is not enough area in the bottom of a 40g
4 6" is a pertty big fish, and they are messy eaters to boot
they are also pretty aggressive
they are super hearty and fish breeders and such frequently use them to cycle tanks for fish in cycles (people with 100+ tanks)
200 fry per batch a batch every 21 days.... get the problem?
I've kept jewels in the past and while they're no green terrors or anything, I found them quite aggressive, at the very least aggressive enough to caution anyone against adding them into a tank with your average fish. The last one of mine I traded into my LFS, he went into a tank of mixed Africans, some significantly larger than him at the time and he beat the tar out of everything in there. I totally appreciate personality differences between individual fish, and for someone who seems to mostly keep Africans they may not be *that* aggressive but I would recommend to the average community tank keeper to be wary of adding them to a tank that you aren't willing to dedicate to them.
I don't know about where you are, but I have never seen jewels for sale much over 1-1.5", I wouldn't call them *easy* to sex, particularly for someone without much experience doing it, especially not at that size.
I'm just curious, why would you have a problem with convicts in a 40 gal. but you would recommend to the OP to keep Malawi cichlids? Especially picking from a tank of mixed Africans? Unless you have a lot of experience with them, you have no idea what you're getting, which means you could easily end up with unsuitable M:F ratios and mixing unsuitable species. A 6" fish in a 40 gal. tank I don't think is at all unreasonable, and convicts are definitely no messier than a tank overstocked with Africans. I agree fry can be a problem but there are plenty of solutions, trade them to a LFS, sell or use them as feeders, or try giving them away.
I don't know about where you are, but I have never seen jewels for sale much over 1-1.5", I wouldn't call them *easy* to sex, particularly for someone without much experience doing it, especially not at that size.
I'm just curious, why would you have a problem with convicts in a 40 gal. but you would recommend to the OP to keep Malawi cichlids? Especially picking from a tank of mixed Africans? Unless you have a lot of experience with them, you have no idea what you're getting, which means you could easily end up with unsuitable M:F ratios and mixing unsuitable species. A 6" fish in a 40 gal. tank I don't think is at all unreasonable, and convicts are definitely no messier than a tank overstocked with Africans. I agree fry can be a problem but there are plenty of solutions, trade them to a LFS, sell or use them as feeders, or try giving them away.
The tail of a femail jewel is see through at the very end (it is rimmed with like a see through trim)
I currently house both red and green jewels and have no issues with aggression over and above any other african cichlid
In a crowded African community that is properly aqua-scaped they are pretty easy to keep. Generally what is seen in the mixed African tanks (that are stocked out of flordia fish farms) in a LFS are Acei, Kenyi, yellow labs, Zebras (red, white, blue, ob) aratus, bumblebee and johani, maybe some unnamed haps/peacocks that are juvenile and are difficult to identify but are generally less aggressive then the affore mentioned group. Other then the kenyi you could literally scoop a net blindly into that tank bring home some fish and do pretty good. (oh you might see some venestus or livingstoni in there too, they will be fine for about 3 years till they get too big but there is a market for large ones and the LFS is usually pretty happy to take them back) I see decent sized and almost always sexable jewles all the time. I did have one that had to go back to the store after some time because he was a erk but I have had far more troubles with male kenyi then i have with the jewels a single jewel is almost never problematic as they are egg layers not moth brooders so you don't tend to have breeding/crossbreeding issues.
LFS don't generally want convict fry, I know of not a single LFS around here that would take ten let alone the 200 that come in a batch, it's somewhat different when you are talking about african fry that come from batches of 10-20 instead of SA/CA batches of 100 or more.
Yeah they are messy, not as bad as say an oscar or a common pleco but they are pretty messy.
oh yeah and on M;F ratios malowi cichlids will happily cross bread that being said M;F ratios in a mixed species tank are a non issue as the males of one species will happily accept the females of the other. They are nippy enough, they don't "pair" or "raise" their young so if you have a single straggler from each batch of fry id be surprised.
Anything else you would like to go toe to toe on?
If he is dead set on keeping convicts there will be wars in that tank, however great news is that they will happily repopulate it for you... I guess if thats something you like then go for it. They are also pretty bland to look at imho.
Again they are not mid water fish they claim ground space so in a 40L you will have limited stocking room. but what do i know.
I currently house both red and green jewels and have no issues with aggression over and above any other african cichlid
In a crowded African community that is properly aqua-scaped they are pretty easy to keep. Generally what is seen in the mixed African tanks (that are stocked out of flordia fish farms) in a LFS are Acei, Kenyi, yellow labs, Zebras (red, white, blue, ob) aratus, bumblebee and johani, maybe some unnamed haps/peacocks that are juvenile and are difficult to identify but are generally less aggressive then the affore mentioned group. Other then the kenyi you could literally scoop a net blindly into that tank bring home some fish and do pretty good. (oh you might see some venestus or livingstoni in there too, they will be fine for about 3 years till they get too big but there is a market for large ones and the LFS is usually pretty happy to take them back) I see decent sized and almost always sexable jewles all the time. I did have one that had to go back to the store after some time because he was a erk but I have had far more troubles with male kenyi then i have with the jewels a single jewel is almost never problematic as they are egg layers not moth brooders so you don't tend to have breeding/crossbreeding issues.
LFS don't generally want convict fry, I know of not a single LFS around here that would take ten let alone the 200 that come in a batch, it's somewhat different when you are talking about african fry that come from batches of 10-20 instead of SA/CA batches of 100 or more.
Yeah they are messy, not as bad as say an oscar or a common pleco but they are pretty messy.
oh yeah and on M;F ratios malowi cichlids will happily cross bread that being said M;F ratios in a mixed species tank are a non issue as the males of one species will happily accept the females of the other. They are nippy enough, they don't "pair" or "raise" their young so if you have a single straggler from each batch of fry id be surprised.
Anything else you would like to go toe to toe on?
If he is dead set on keeping convicts there will be wars in that tank, however great news is that they will happily repopulate it for you... I guess if thats something you like then go for it. They are also pretty bland to look at imho.
Again they are not mid water fish they claim ground space so in a 40L you will have limited stocking room. but what do i know.