Anyone ever mix fish with non-fish in the same aquarium?

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
C

Carefree_Dude

Piranha
MFK Member
Feb 4, 2011
1,226
36
81
Portland, OR
My first experience mixing fish and non fish involved putting an albino clawed frog into the fish tank. Long story short, the frog ate a catfish, but i was able to rescue the catfish in time. then that catfish got big, and ate the frog.

I've also mixed fiddler crabs with fish, and have been pretty successful; though sometimes a crab would disappear. I had dwarf frogs in this tank as well, but they also disappeared after a time.

i'm sure most of us have done snails/shrimp as well. I've seen people do turtles too.
 
I have two large Patriot Crabs and a few small crayfish with my Gar's.
They clean up all the debris that fall to the bottom of the tank.

I have some snails and usually put a few dozen ghost shrimp in when my LFS has them.
Don't know if I would go with turtles as they are pretty nasty on the water.
 
I have a paper mache' fish in the tank on a stick.
 
When I was younger, I kept comet goldfish with freshwater clams.
 
i think it really comes down to what type of fish your mixing together with what types of non-fish animals in your tank...

For example, if you put a puffer in a tank with any sort of invert, chances are your inverts are going to start disappearing, or on the other hand, if you put a cray in with small slow fish, then your fish may start disappearing...
 
I seen african clawed frogs successfully kept in a community aquarium.
Plus I keep apple snails with my bichirs and never had a problem.

[YT]tEWjYvj9gu4[/YT]
 
I currently use my planted ten gallon tank with cherry shrimp, to incubate/hatch/rear my cory eggs/fry. It has pond snails, ramshorn snails and of course, cherry shrimp.

At first I thought all the eggs were eaten by the pond snails, but yesterday, I started seeing little flicks of cory fry in the bottom of the tank. Only time will tell how many survived, it may be all the eggs for all I know. I think the pond snails did a fantastic job keeping the eggs fungus free, which is a common problem when hatching eggs. Previously, I used a bare ten gallon tank, with methylene blue. All eggs hatched, but due to water quality problems, lack of food, only three babies survived, and one died after it reached 2cm. All of those babies have a disfigurement of their tails from water quality when they were very young. (Admittedly, I forgot about them for a few days.)

Anyway, These babies have lots of food, super clean water, and I have high hopes for this clutch. It's so heavily planted, it's impossible to count them all right now, but I've seen up to 4 at the same time, so I'm sure the rest are in there somewhere.
 
I've kept various turtles with my fish over the years. Many ppl think this doesn't work out but it can. Last turtle I kept was a Yellow Belly Slider. He lived in perfect harmony with CL's, pleco, and a pearsei cichlid. Everything was going great until the Pearsei began bullying the turtle during feeding time. He beat up the turtle's front legs pretty bad. I removed him, got him healed up, then gave him to a friend.

People often think that it's the turtle causing the problem...not always the case.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom