Robert Gentel’s Blog

Ok, so I have two “Siamese Fighting Fish” (a.k.a. “Betta” fish) at the moment, and I had one in a community tank and the other in a large vase. The community tank is a bit aggressive, there is a Red-finned shark that harasses a lot of the other fish. He hasn’t injured any fish that I know of, but he chases them when they come near the bottom of the tank.

With a large Angelfish keeping the fish at the top of the tank in check I figured I may have the right kind of crowd to make for a tank that can house two Betas in one tank. See, everyone “knows” that you can’t do this. The conventional wisdom is that they will “fight to the death. But in the wild, that is just not true, the weaker fish will usually flee. However in a small tank there is no opportunity to flee so the Bettas can actually kill each other.

In any case, the experiment seems to be working. They have both been in the community tank for a week now and the larger one only chases the smaller one for a second or two and they’ve not even touched. It’s a tentative peace, based on the smaller one being afraid enough and the larger one being uncomfortable enough around the red-finned shark and the angelfish. I don’t recommend it for novice aquarium keepers but for those with experience with difficult fish pairings and with a large tank with the right crowding and enough places to hide this can be done. They will chase each other briefly at most and have not fought.

I bought a Prehistoric Dragon Goby (see a picture of this freakish species here) from a store where I also found the first large female guppies for sale in Costa Rica.

The Dragon Goby is very interesting insofar as appearance but he spends all his time hiding in the dense plants I setup for small fish so I almost never see him. I may end up getting another so that the sightings are more common.

I also bought a Ghost Glass Cat from the same store, whose transparent body is very unique. I’ll probably get him some tank mates soon.

I setup a smaller tank with the new female guppies and 2 new male guppies and have started to breed them. I moved some of the larger fry from a fry tank into my community tank but my angelfish ate them because they refused to hide in any of the planted areas and just sat there waiting for him. I tried to get them to go toward any of the aquarium corners, where there are rocks and dense plants but these fry just didn’t seem to be afraid of big fish and were eaten one by one.

When I got my 50-gallon aquarium in November, I put all my fish in and left my mid-sized tank unplugged and sitting in a corner. Today I wanted to get it ready for some guppies that I want to breed and I cleaned it and set it up in my office when I noticed a baby guppy swimming around.  I unplugged the filter and stopped putting food in the tank almost two weeks ago and the lil’ bugger is still alive.

I quickly setup a filter and gave him a big meal (steak and eggs).

I have rekindled my interest in aquariums and within the last two months I’ve purchased two small tanks and started breeding guppies and platys. I’d been looking for a larger 50-70 gallon tank and yesterday I found a great deal on a 50-gallon aquarium and I bought it to use as my first show tank. I’ll still need to buy that huge 300-gallon tank I was eying one day but the two breeding tanks and the new show tank are going to keep me happy for a while (at least I have somewhere to put all my fry).

I’m using a Cascade internal filter, a heater keeping the water at 77 degrees (it’s been uncharacteristically cold in Costa Rica these days) and natural rocks and plants. The live plants are a first for me, as I’ve always used plastic aquarium plants. Now I’ll never go back, and even removed all plastic plants from my show tank as they look gaudily flourescent next to the live aquarium plants.

In the tank I have angelfish, mollies, platys, guppies, catfish, Cardinal Neons, Red Tail Sharks, Zebra Danios and, of course, guppies. I have a beautiful Beta as well and a very interesting “Blind Tetra” who has no eyes and swims around the tank bumping into everything.

I’ve moved some fry over inside plastic breeding tanks that float inside the show tank and though the water is a tad cloudy (I didn’t wash the silt out of the natural river rocks well enough) the aquarium is beautiful and I’ve spent hours looking at it already.

I am planning to add some additional tropical fish to the tank after it cycles and will also focus on breeding show guppies. One of which gave birth today, and now I have platy and guppy fry to raise, which is what I love the most about aquariums. Livebearers are easy to breed and guppies are a joy. I’ll post pictures and more about my aquarium setup as my hobby progresses.