Are dats cannibals?

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Katie_Ca

Exodon
MFK Member
Nov 8, 2018
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GTA - Ontario, Canada
Hi everyone,

I have 3 NTTs about 5" each. I recently had an opportunity to pick up 3 baby ITs about 1" each. My question is, can I put them in the same tank? Will the big ones eat the small ones? Will the small ones fit in the mouths of the big ones? Ive never fed the big ones live fish so I'd like to see what your experiences are.

The big ones are eating pellets, frozen shrimp and frozen chopped up smelts.
 
My guess is they'd try to eat the smaller ones. Grow them out separately then add them when they are larger and stronger swimmers.
 
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Katie_Ca said:
Hi everyone,

I have 3 NTTs about 5" each. I recently had an opportunity to pick up 3 baby ITs about 1" each. My question is, can I put them in the same tank? Will the big ones eat the small ones? Will the small ones fit in the mouths of the big ones? Ive never fed the big ones live fish so I'd like to see what your experiences are.

The big ones are eating pellets, frozen shrimp and frozen chopped up smelts.
Click to expand...



Yes they probably would eat the smaller Dats.
 
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Just woke up so hang with me here..

Nothing in my experience bas ever lead me to believe datnoid cannibalize. Obviously we're talking living animals here so it's not something to just do willy nilly but I can tell you I currently have datnoid pushing 2" with my 4" NTT and 10 or 11" IT and the bigs have never gone after or tried to eat the little guys even when they were added to the tank at closer to 1" in size. This is in a 180 tile bottom tank with limited hiding spots and all of the fish spend a good amount of time in the wide open and around eachother.

Years ago, maybe 7 or 8, I had a similar setup to this as well only it was a 75g. I had two probably 13" IT and added them to a tank with a few IT measuring around 2" and they never gave them a second glance.

Every time I've personally had very small datnoid with larger individuals the little ones flare up to "110%" stability if you will, lol. It seems to be something of a, "Hey! We're on the same team, I'm one of you! These spines on my back won't feel great going down your throat!" It seems like they're identifying themselves as another datnoid and the bigger ones seem to know and leave them be.

I don't use live feeders for any of my fish but it in an older set up where the scenario was similar to yours I had a South American "Gar" (type of super tetra basically lol) who I was using feeder guppies to train onto pellets. Idea was to get him knowing when it was coming and hit the surface to beat the datnoids to it and over time I added hikari sinking pellets more often until he realized he liked em then he ate anything. Well needless to say a few feeder guppies hot past it and the datnoids happily ate them but never once that I saw even looked at the little 1-2" dats as a snack.

If you decide to try this take precaution, maybe a critter keeper to create a barrier at first and not a bad idea to feed them well maybe an hour before introducing the little one so they don't have any additional temptation.

I know I'm not the only one who believes this seems (key word seems) to never happen so others may be able to give you their $.02 as well and you can decide what you want to do from there.
 
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Here's a photo maybe 15 minutes after I added one of the little IT to my 180g with a couple of larger dats, this one being around 10-11".

Also, I just moved and while I'm getting the 180 back up, plumbed and running the big buy is sharing an Barr bottom 20g with the four 2" little guys.

20190817_030716.jpg
 
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I honestly couldn't put it any better than Gage already has,I too have housed bite sized dats with much bigger ones and experienced no problems.
I might even have made a thread with photos some years ago.
 
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Thanks for sharing your experiences guys. It's encouraging to hear that they get along. I've been experimenting the 1" with different kinds of food so once I get that out of the way, I'll move them together and see what happens.
 
I actually recall UK member on here a few years who did have a very large IT (it eventually hit 20-21") that ate a smaller IT.
If you look at the last post by a member called spwd you can read about it. So it can happen although very rarely. Sorry if the link doesn't come out right

Got my old monster IT back now he's 20" - pics

Nice and huge IT you have there mate
www.monsterfishkeepers.com www.monsterfishkeepers.com
 
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