Black Ghost Knife and Shy Tankmates

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cbfreder

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jun 24, 2006
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I have a small shoal of Glass Catfish who are really shy (except for one, but let's not talk about that porker). They actually only take freeze dried bloodworms and no frozen or live foods that I've tried yet.

Anyway, there is a beautiful 5" knife at the local petsmart (I swear) who I am dying to take home with me. He'd look beautiful with my cats. The shoal are all ~3" so I am not so worried about them getting eaten, just intimidated. Does anyone have any experience with a situation like this? I've heard that knives can be docile when acclimated, but what about in a new environment? I keep ghost shrimp as cleaners and I am about to separate some egg bearers. Can I keep the tank stocked with several of them and let the knife feed as he pleases?

Brandon
 
My Ghost Knife is along the lines of about 7-8" now and he has been doing fine with my South american cichlids and even my aro. They are somewhat docile but you need to make sure you have a good place for him to hide, I have a small cave structure with little crevecis that i made from rocks for him. He comes out sometimes but mainly leaves the other fish alone. The thing with knifefish is, since they are blind they can sometimes "nip" at your other fish unintentionally as they are trying to figure out there surroundings. I think your fish would be fine with the knife. Id be more worried about other fish eating him. Also feed him frozen bloodworms thawed. They love that! Hope that was informative.
 
I had my gkf in a 140 gal. and he never came out. The last one was from petsmart and he never came out either. Unfortunately the first one died. Being they are so cool I got another from a better shop. He would not come out of hiding. To keep him from starving I put him in a 30 gal. with tetras and danios and only one cave. Now I know where he is and can feed him bloodworms,he seems to be doing fine now.
 
cbfreder;451354; said:
I have a small shoal of Glass Catfish who are really shy (except for one, but let's not talk about that porker). They actually only take freeze dried bloodworms and no frozen or live foods that I've tried yet.

Anyway, there is a beautiful 5" knife at the local petsmart (I swear) who I am dying to take home with me. He'd look beautiful with my cats. The shoal are all ~3" so I am not so worried about them getting eaten, just intimidated. Does anyone have any experience with a situation like this? I've heard that knives can be docile when acclimated, but what about in a new environment? I keep ghost shrimp as cleaners and I am about to separate some egg bearers. Can I keep the tank stocked with several of them and let the knife feed as he pleases?

Brandon
Click to expand...

BGKs are pretty peaceful unless there's another BGK (usually). The Ghost Shrimps will more likely end up as food. The Glass Cats should be fine. How many do you have? And did you mean live bearers? Live Bearers such as Guppies are pretty small and will also get eaten unless it's a bigger Live Bearer like Mollies or Swordtails. What's your stock like? When you say "several" are you talking about seven other fish, or seven different species?
 
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