Have you ever kept a solo wet pet?
- Thread starter philipraposo1982
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Not currently, though I've done it in the past. Works great for species that would require a giant tank to play nice with others. Closest thing I have currently is a panamensis who is with only non-cichlids. He mostly ignored them for almost a year but now seems to have bitten the tail off my nice X. Kallmanni swordtail from rusty wessell. I'm not buying more fish for that tank,so if he does end up killing his mates, he will be a "solo wet pet".
I'm going to say yes even though the only fish I've kept alone was my betta and only for a few months.
I say yes because my big geo Horrace had tank mates, but they were silver dollars and a bgk.. Dollars aren't very interactive outside of feeding time and the bgk was hidden 75% of the time.
And I also currently keep a female GT (named River) who originally shared her tank with 7 black widow tetras and an L397 pleco.. She killed one of the tetras after living harmoniously for months, so I quickly took out the remaining 6. I couldn't catch the damn pleco so he's still in there, living happily with her. I never see her bother him even when she has eggs, when I see him he's never had any fin or body damage so I assume she leaves him be.
While they weren't/aren't kept "solo" as such, both Horrace and River were/are my babies, and pretty much wet pets.
I would share pics but I'm pretty sure everyone's seen more than enough of them.
I say yes because my big geo Horrace had tank mates, but they were silver dollars and a bgk.. Dollars aren't very interactive outside of feeding time and the bgk was hidden 75% of the time.
And I also currently keep a female GT (named River) who originally shared her tank with 7 black widow tetras and an L397 pleco.. She killed one of the tetras after living harmoniously for months, so I quickly took out the remaining 6. I couldn't catch the damn pleco so he's still in there, living happily with her. I never see her bother him even when she has eggs, when I see him he's never had any fin or body damage so I assume she leaves him be.
While they weren't/aren't kept "solo" as such, both Horrace and River were/are my babies, and pretty much wet pets.
I would share pics but I'm pretty sure everyone's seen more than enough of them.
I have never kept a solo wet pet before, and I feel like some reasons as to why some of us aquaria hobbyist, that don't keep solo wet pets, but have community tanks is for that very reason, diversity. Either it being small community fish tank, or predatory community fish tank, there is just more features about a fish that not one fish will all have, which one of several reasons why I have multiple community tanks. For instance, I have bought 3 different kinds of mahseer from Fugupuff, a Neolissochilus stracheyi, a Tor sinensis, and a Tor putitora. Each one with a fascinating feature to them and how nature has progressed differently with each one, for instance, progression listed left to right, has a shorter head, then it gets a little longer, and once it hits the himalayan it gets quite narrow. This also gives a different behavior for each one, stracheyi for instance just swims around till I give them food, while sinensis from time to time will do a little gravel sand sifting, while the putitora will always be taking advantage of its evolutionary snout and be ramming its snout straight into the sand/gravel to sift on a daily, as which the other two mahseers have trouble doing or dont even do at all. Plus its interesting to watch how they interact, I keep them with some hampalas, two other mahseers, and some other cyprinidae and siluriformes, also experimenting with social behaviors with more aggressive fish like black wolffish, but in that tank only the sinensis and the putitora will fight once every two weeks or so and bash their bodies against each other, very cool to watch. You can see my love for a community tank, get so much info just by watching multiply fish rather than one in my opinion.It also depends on the fish as well, as most people have posted in this thread, a majority of fish kept solo are not necessarily aggressive but instead VERY territorial, and I say this because I feel like aggressive and territorial are two different things, since we hobbyist can only try to mimic an environment but never a true containment of water, as to why flowerhorns would sometimes take over an entire tank to itself, since it can basically feel the whole container it lives in, otherwise in the wild, I doubt you will ever find a flowerhorn and a jaguar cichlid duking it out to the death. And for aggressive fishes, would lean more to fishes that aren't territorial, like the African tiger fishes, they are more migratory, very unpredictable, passive one day, the next, see a chunk of your prochilodus missing from the tiger. All in all though, these are just some small details that I really like about community tanks and as to why I dont keep solo wet pets, more diversity and more things to see in my opinion.
I don't think this was meant as a debate, I have kept both set ups, still do.
Many fish in the wild fly solo year round, and only team up with the opposite sex during spawning season. Some fish are simply too aggro, like my male midas, who even at 3" chased his 12 other siblings round & round and from one end of a 6ft tank to the other, almost all day long. Territorial and aggression typically go hand in hand with many species. Perhaps he would have chilled out in a 12ft tank …...
Many fish in the wild fly solo year round, and only team up with the opposite sex during spawning season. Some fish are simply too aggro, like my male midas, who even at 3" chased his 12 other siblings round & round and from one end of a 6ft tank to the other, almost all day long. Territorial and aggression typically go hand in hand with many species. Perhaps he would have chilled out in a 12ft tank …...
