Marble Hatchets.

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I'm pretty new to fish keeping and have an okish understanding of how to keep fish. I'm wanting to get some marble hatchets. Are they difficult to keep, i've done some research but have come across some confilcting stuff, some stuff says they are easy, some stuff says they are difficult.

Any advice would be good. Don't want to get them and end up strssing them or killing them.

Thanks
 
They can be rather delicate, so id probably keep them with peacfull fish. Also you need to make sure your tank has no small openings around the top as these fish are very accomplished jumpers :)
 
thx. I've got to try and find some lol. Can't seem to get any at the mo. The lid on my tank sseems prettyok. Its a rena tank with a flat sheet of composite material as a lid with one small opening for feeding so i think i'll be ok on them jumping out. Just don't want to kill them if they are really delicate water wise.
 
I've found them to be perfectly fine with boisterous fish like barbs and larger tetras, they are pretty boisterous amongst themselves and I've even seen my 2 clash knocking scales right off each other a couple of times (but are generally very peaceful). I'm keeping mine in soft water pH 6.8 and they have been pretty hardy in the past when it comes to disease and nitrate tolerance. They were OK at 50ppm nitrate and survived an out brake of whitespot shortly after purchase.

Now I keep the nitrates under around 10ppm though.

I only have 2 left out of 3 that I got over 3 years ago (all they had left at the lfs), one jumped out a gap in the hood for the filter cable. Another thing is that when I first got them, they wouldn't eat flake, only mosquito larvae and frozen food I could get to float on the surface like bloodworm. They caught on after a few weeks though and will now eat anything :good: .

Make sure you never leave your hood open for too long either, because if they get a fright they will come literally flying straight out the tank. Floating plants help to make them feel more secure though.
 
I originally bought 6 and after 2 weeks I only had 2 left. So I bought 6 more, and they were slightly smaller than the lasting ones, and all of the new ones died. I moved them to a different tank now, with tetras, platies, etc. and they are fine. All that died didn't have any visible diseases, I'm thinking they just didn't acclimatise well. None jumped, despite the open top.

EDIT:
Oh, and I know those two aren't 'dominant' or anything 'cause they never really chased the other hatchets at all... in fact, I don't think I've ever seen any of them chase each other...
 
thanks for the replys. I'm going to try and get some (thats the hard part), and see how i go.
 

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