Miss Wiggle
Practically perfect in every way
in the bit about colourful fish 
like i said it's only a couple of paragraphs but worth a little read!
like i said it's only a couple of paragraphs but worth a little read!
Red Tailed Black Shark
- Thread starter kewskills
- Start date
vinylman
Essentially Humanoid
You say you have Mollies at the moment; do you use salt?. That might preclude you taking the RTBS.
thanks for thinking though CentricOregon
Fish Crazy
i've got 2 red tail black sharks, one of them are fine but the other is a bit aggressive at points, i have them in with cichlids, he always chases the firemouth just because the firemouth decided to nibble his tail one day, ever since then he just doesn't like him at all. they never cause harm to each other though, i think there good fish even though they chase everything, never once killed a fish.
Lucky..and probably your rtbs is very afraid of you so he does nothing but hide when you're around.
RTBS, are extremely aggressive to other fish but most are shy to people and hide when we are around.
They also can't really do much damage to other fish other than the stress factor. RTBS, in the real world, are actually just minnows. They are so named to be a bigger seller at the lfs.
I love RTBS, personally. Beautiful fish. They are more show than go tho and if any fish stand up to it, they will relent after a few tries. If they don't, that fish will forever be the RTBS, biatch.
Tokis-Phoenix
^_^
This is my experience and advice of keeping RTBS;
Personality: tend to be semi-agressive or semi-territorial, they can be skittish fish and will tend to spend a fair amount of time hiding (particularly during the day time) or patrolling their territory.
Stocking RTBS with other fish: You should avoid stocking fish with RTBS that look similar to the RTBS either body shape wise or patterning/colouring wise. In the wild, RTBS will try to stake out a territory and will fight off any other RTBS that tresspass on their territory, so you should avoid keeping more than one RTBS per tank as they will often fight to the death (particularly as they mature) until one of the RTBS is removed from the tank and the other is allowed to stake out its own territory.
They are not the brightest of fish in the sense that they will often attack any fish that look similar to an RTBS, so tank mates should be chosen with care. Their personality varies a lot- some RTBS are a lot more territorial/agressive than others, but generally speaking, they fall under the semi-agressive category of fish.
Habitat/environment: RTBS will spend a lot of time either patrolling and keeping its eye on a peice of important territory of its, or hiding in its territory. They like to have somewhere they can go and be out of sight of other fish- a large pile of wood or large rocks, creating a sort of cave with many entrances, is ideal for them. RTBS are primarily bottom to middle dwelling fish in fish tanks. If you have more than one type of fish that may make a lot of use out of such types of caves, i would advise having more than one pile/cave made out of rocks/wood in the tank as the RTBS will be less inclined to defend his patch if other fish are not forced to share his cave all the time.
A soft substrate, ideally fine sand (but fine rounded gravel is acceptable) is the best as they will collect any food they find lying on the subtrate using their barbels/whiskers to eat, so the substrate must not be rough gravel as they can damage their mouths trying to eat off such a substrate.
Feeding: They are technically omnivores but their diet is much more leaning towards the herbivore end of the omnivore scale. They will eat a lot of algae given a chance (not stuck to the glass though, only on objects in the tank), and will scavenge for food along the bottom of the tank. Algae wafers/tablets, blanched and chopped up spinache, de-shelled and chopped up pease, catfish pelets, TetraPro vegetable wafers, frozen or live bloodworms and krill and various other foods make an ideal diet for them. They may sometimes clean algae off plant leaves, but will not eat the plants themselves.
Other notes: 24-26 degrees is a good temp to keep an RTBS in my experience, i would also say that the longer the tank the better. A 3ft long tank is the absolute minimum recommended length of a tank that an RTBS should be kept in- with my RTBS, i initially adopted him off a friend who had kept him in a 2.5ft long tank since the RTBS was a juvenile. He was particularly agressive while in his old tank and in the early days of me keeping him, but i have found that since he has been in my 5ft long 125gal tank he has chilled out massively and is not half as agressive as he used to be now he is in a much larger/longer tank
.
Personality: tend to be semi-agressive or semi-territorial, they can be skittish fish and will tend to spend a fair amount of time hiding (particularly during the day time) or patrolling their territory.
Stocking RTBS with other fish: You should avoid stocking fish with RTBS that look similar to the RTBS either body shape wise or patterning/colouring wise. In the wild, RTBS will try to stake out a territory and will fight off any other RTBS that tresspass on their territory, so you should avoid keeping more than one RTBS per tank as they will often fight to the death (particularly as they mature) until one of the RTBS is removed from the tank and the other is allowed to stake out its own territory.
They are not the brightest of fish in the sense that they will often attack any fish that look similar to an RTBS, so tank mates should be chosen with care. Their personality varies a lot- some RTBS are a lot more territorial/agressive than others, but generally speaking, they fall under the semi-agressive category of fish.
Habitat/environment: RTBS will spend a lot of time either patrolling and keeping its eye on a peice of important territory of its, or hiding in its territory. They like to have somewhere they can go and be out of sight of other fish- a large pile of wood or large rocks, creating a sort of cave with many entrances, is ideal for them. RTBS are primarily bottom to middle dwelling fish in fish tanks. If you have more than one type of fish that may make a lot of use out of such types of caves, i would advise having more than one pile/cave made out of rocks/wood in the tank as the RTBS will be less inclined to defend his patch if other fish are not forced to share his cave all the time.
A soft substrate, ideally fine sand (but fine rounded gravel is acceptable) is the best as they will collect any food they find lying on the subtrate using their barbels/whiskers to eat, so the substrate must not be rough gravel as they can damage their mouths trying to eat off such a substrate.
Feeding: They are technically omnivores but their diet is much more leaning towards the herbivore end of the omnivore scale. They will eat a lot of algae given a chance (not stuck to the glass though, only on objects in the tank), and will scavenge for food along the bottom of the tank. Algae wafers/tablets, blanched and chopped up spinache, de-shelled and chopped up pease, catfish pelets, TetraPro vegetable wafers, frozen or live bloodworms and krill and various other foods make an ideal diet for them. They may sometimes clean algae off plant leaves, but will not eat the plants themselves.
Other notes: 24-26 degrees is a good temp to keep an RTBS in my experience, i would also say that the longer the tank the better. A 3ft long tank is the absolute minimum recommended length of a tank that an RTBS should be kept in- with my RTBS, i initially adopted him off a friend who had kept him in a 2.5ft long tank since the RTBS was a juvenile. He was particularly agressive while in his old tank and in the early days of me keeping him, but i have found that since he has been in my 5ft long 125gal tank he has chilled out massively and is not half as agressive as he used to be now he is in a much larger/longer tank
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