mixing shellies

[TaffyFish]

Did anyone ever try 2 or more species of Tanganyikan shell-dweller in the same tank?

Did it work? I'd love to hear your experiences - what size tank, which species etc.

I tried multies and ocellatus in a 2ft 20g tank, and gave up after the occies overran the multi's shells. It must be possible though?

 

[Purple]

Presumably it will depend on the strength (and patience) of the potentially dominant species. I wouldn't have thought that a 2ft tank would provide enough spacing for it to work out - though there must be a "relative" limit beyond which tolerance would be encouraged. Even Multies (sp) will take (at least) a foot square as their own - and that's from a one inch fish!

By the way Taffy - meant to let you know - we lost a couple - including the male. We moved out the Syno 'cos it just got too big - this upset the tank balance, and in the space of 24 hrs they were gone. Wouldn't have believed it if someone had asked, but having fished the bodies out, it's a case of being slapped round the head by a big dose of reality (and the inevitable feeling of personal responsiblilty for this).

The remaining three females are fine, and have now been joined by a Flathead Pl*co, (L17) who seems content to stay at 2 inches, and is accepted as a tankmate by the Multies who always shied away from the syno (the syno is now in the 55 and giving the L200 a run for his money).

And the moral of the tale - things happen VERY quickly in a small tank......

 

[TaffyFish]

want another male?

 

[phOOey]

i always heard that it was very difficult to do. Obviously if you had a big enough tank it would be fairly easy, just put one species at one side and the other one at the other side. The two species of shelly would never have to venture in to each others personal space.

 

[Orion]

With a large enough tank, anything is possible.

I would say a three or four foot tank is as small as one could go and still be sucessfull with breeding both.

Visual bariers would be vital. Mabey even going so far as having one of the shell beds higher than the other, say 4 in. or so? Both areas would have to be good for each species so they would have no reason to leave to look for something better ( ex: enough shells, good amounts of food available..) If the two species were to interact enough, I would assume that eventualy one would become the dominate species of the tank.

Going to guess at what would happen if I were to put the two species I have togeather in a tank. A colony of multies, and three brevis (1m, 2f). The advantage of the multies are numbers. However the smaller size of the multies would be a disadvantage, even more so when compared to the larger size of the brevis. I've seen my male brevis kill a bristle nose plec three times his size, so he really does not back down from anything. I would say it would not take long before he ran off the colony and killed most if not all of the multies.

It would be interesting to see how small one could go and still keep both species. And what precautions were needed to keep the peace.

 

[TaffyFish]

I'd not heard that about brevis killing BN plecs, I had heard that brichardi would remove their eyes. How big was the pleco when this happened?

 

[Orion]

It was a 4in female bristle. I just blamed the brevis as being more agresive than average. He does like to rule the roost so to speak.

 

[Purple]

well - the thing with shellies was always "attitude over size"

Taffy - not sure about the male - which means we're not sure what we'd do with the resulting fry - gonna talk to the missus about that one - nice of you to offer tho = gotta get in touch properly soon.....speak to you then

 

[phOOey]

One thing that could work is that you put one species on one side of the tank, then a big rock pile in the middle, and then the other species on the other. Then put a rock dweller in the pile, like alto. calvus. I think that that would stop each species of shellie ever wanting to go anywhere near the rock pile to get to the other species of shellie.

 

[Desi]

you're really banking on the calvus being a breaker/divider; hope the calvus would be up to the challenge; otherwise I see it being torn to shreds while the two rival 'gangs' fight it out.

 

[Orion]

The calvus would be more than up to a challange to do that. They are able to defend themselves from attackers much larger than them, so smaller (or equal size if juvenile) would be no problem.

 

[phOOey]

yeah i heard they had really tough scales, but weak jaws, so to try and avoid getting into any jaw locking fights with stronger cichlids they will bend sideways showing off there tough flanks to try and intimidate their openent.