Rope Fish Gone Without A Trace

[Bennlfer]

My rope fish has disappeared on me with out a trace... I checked both of my HOB filters and all around my stand on the floor for him, but with no luck. Whatever happened to him, he is dead Do you guys think a 13 inch Gar can eat a 10 inch rope fish?

 

[GarNiac]

yup, its possible, never trust a gar with bichirs,
sori for the loss

 

[gazelle]

yeah definitly a possibility, but stay on the lookout!!

 

[Hao]

yup, its possible, never trust a gar with bichirs,
sori for the loss

why not? i never had problems keeping big gars with small bichirs,besides if you kept it well fed it shouldnt have been a problem and i think your ropefish did get eaten by your gar,since ropefish is like earthworms to them

 

[GarNiac]

why not? i never had problems keeping big gars with small bichirs,besides if you kept it well fed it shouldnt have been a problem and i think your ropefish did get eaten by your gar,since ropefish is like earthworms to them

there is always a chance, you may get away with it, but not everyone, I had similar experience before, and I ended up traded away my gars. I fed them well, but you will never know that they may turn aggressive against each other in the same tank.
The lesson here is never to trust any other predatory fish with my bichirs, any otherwise .... bad ending.

 

[Infblue]

there is always a chance, you may get away with it, but not everyone, I had similar experience before, and I ended up traded away my gars. I fed them well, but you will never know that they may turn aggressive against each other in the same tank.
The lesson here is never to trust any other predatory fish with my bichirs, any otherwise .... bad ending.

if your gars were aggressive toward the bichirs, then i think your experience was actually outside the norm. gars (maybe except alligator gar) and bichirs actually make pretty good tankmates as long as they're compatible in size.

As far as predation between a large gar and a small bichir, there's definitely a risk like you said, just like keeping any other predatory fish of significantly different size, so i wouldn't recommend it. I had it happened once because it grew faster than my bichir in the growout, but once i moved it to another tank with larger bichirs, everything's fine.

 

[moeligerent]

Yeah, I'm real sorry to hear about your Rope Fish. It's always a sad day when you lose one of your own, especially when it's to another tankmate that you thought would be cool with him. At least now you know that predatory animals should be treated as such.