best knifefish for 125 gallon tank
- Thread starter huntery18
- Start date
Getting 7-8 clown loaches is a very good number.
As far as getting a single fish in the 7-8 inch range, have you considered a leopard ctenopoma? Get one small, start it on pellets, and watch it grow. If you feed it feeders, you may never be able to get it off of them, and it can make them aggressive. I made the mistake once of buying a 7" leopard ctenopoma from a pet store. It would not take anything but feeders, and it was mean. It constantly battled with my large gold severum, and since I never use feeders, I took it back. From then on, I've only purchased them small so I could start them out on pellets. I've never had a problem with any leopard ctenopoma since.
Leopard ctenopoma
yeah i blieve 7 0r 8 would help them be more comfortable, i like the look of that fish just none of my local lfs have it and i cant make myself pay 30 dollar shipping for a $11.99 fish i do however appreciate the suggestion, maybe i just get two bgk 8 clowns and give it some more thought
Some pet stores will call the fish in the youtube video I posted an "african leaf fish" or a "leopard bush fish". So, if you called around asking about a leopard ctenopoma, they may have it, but not know what you are talking about because they may be calling it something else.
yeah i looked it up and they call it an agrican leaf fish sadly they dont carry oddball fish
alright i will when i make a trip there, very interesting fish ill have to look up some m ore info on them like breeding and such
edit- called my lfs looking up ordering and he can get them for 7.49 would you recommend two or does that make them more hostile?
Some people have had problems with these fish when they have more than one in a tank. Others, however, have had success. It's probably one of those fish where you have 1 or 5 in the tank to spread out aggression within the ctenopoma group. Personally, I've always kept them singly. If you want to get multiple leaf fish, introduce them to the tank at the same size at the same time. You'll need the 125 to hold them long term as a 55 gallon won't give them enough space to themselves and will likely result in them fighting each other. You can keep them singly in a 55, though, and just stock the tank with other fish as their tankmates. Just not another ctenopoma.
These fish are very versatile with the tankmates they can be placed with. You can put them with milder cichlids like severums, geophagus, uaru, blood-red parrots, angelfish (like I do minus the angelfish since I no longer keep them) or even with fish like gouramis (moonlight gourami, pearl gourami, etc). Many people also keep them with african butterfly fish. They also do well with large tetra species like congo tetras and non-aggressive barbs like denison barbs. A striped raphael catfish would also work with the fish you have chosen if you like what they look like. I've personally kept ctenopomas with all of these fish except gouarmis and angelfish with no problems at all.
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