Hiding spots or Bare.

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teohha

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Nov 29, 2009
325
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Malaysia
I have just started my Dat craze and am having a little challenge getting my Dats swim freely. They prefer hiding among my driftwood all day, and only come out to feed.

Now most LFS have dats in bare tanks, some are stable, some just stick to the corner of the tank. I am not sure if the LFS uses bare tanks to get Dats to overcome their fear, or is it just the best way to display Dats.

So to get my Dats stable and swimming freely, should I leave my driftwood in or should i try having a bare tank.

Please share your experiences and opinions.
 
LEAVE your driftwood and Please add plants for them. They will come out when they are ready.

My NTT's were the shyist(took a few months before they swam up to me) but eventually they will swim to you cause soon realize You are their source of food.

My IT's are brave little suckers. They swam up to me the first few days.
 
i debated the same problem once before...i have a few different species of dats i noticed my ntt never came out to eat even at night. eventually its belly started to cave in so i moved him into a tank with no decor were it swims freely
 
It's natural for them to hide at such a small size. Try adding more hiding spaces instead of taking them away.
 
I prefer bare tank, but if your adding baby 1 inchers then I would some small bogwood in. Especially if there going with big tigers 10 inch plus. When the new guys r that small they can get caught in the crossfire during feeding Times and get may get injured.

As for hiding, it's normal for small young tigers to do that. It can take a while , many months before they start swimming and displaying more often than hiding.
 
Ive got my 2 to 3" NTTs in with wood and plants and they do come out but ive just put 2 small polys in and this has brought them out alot,also if you put dither fish in that are big enough so they cant get eaten this also brings them out more,i had some very large emperor tetras in with them which were not a lot smaller than the dats and this brought them out,they were not chasing the tetras at all and like i said they were probably about 15mm smaller than the dats,so i thought they would be ok but one NTT ate one and i thought it would die as the tail was hanging out its mouth!
Luckily it is ok but put slightly bigger fish in and it brings them out a treat.

Hope this helps


steve
 
Thanks for all the info. Sorry i forgot to mention I have 3 NTTs at around 3~4 inches.

They share the tank with some bichirs and fl gar. Nether the gar nor the bichir bother my new Dats, only a lone Discus likes chase my Dats around sometimes.
 
teohha;3957206; said:
Thanks for all the info. Sorry i forgot to mention I have 3 NTTs at around 3~4 inches.

They share the tank with some bichirs and fl gar. Nether the gar nor the bichir bother my new Dats, only a lone Discus likes chase my Dats around sometimes.
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At that size I don't do any hiding spots.
 
Ade >> Many Thanks for the advice. I'll give them another week with hiding spots, if they don't come out after that, i will remove the driftwood and see how that turns out.
 
teohha;3957231; said:
Ade >> Many Thanks for the advice. I'll give them another week with hiding spots, if they don't come out after that, i will remove the driftwood and see how that turns out.
Click to expand...

like spwd said, dither fish help usually.

good luck with them.;)
 
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