Need a bit of advice please...7 kribs ?

[Bahney]

Hi i have a 2ft tank X 1ft X 1 1/2 ft

it has been established for a few months now and is doing well i have the following fish

Glass Shrimp
clown loach
two plattys
female betta fighter fish
male dwaft gourami
female bristlenose

i went to a fish auction this weekend and purchased 7 baby kribensis fish, not intentionally but they were part of one lot so it was all or nothing. now i already know that these fish are teratorial, i have kept them in the past (but in my old larger tank) and i know that they need caves/places to hide and a well planted tank

i already have a planted tank and 2 very good caves and at least 2 more hiding places so 4 in total.

the kribs are tiny at the minute around 1-2cm in size and they are starting to show a nice colour.

how many of these can i keep to the tank? i am thinking 1 male 2 female? or do i wait for a pair to break away from the rest and keep the pair?

they are a bit too small to sex only one or two of them seem to be displaying the distinctive red belly of a female.

my local LFS will take any unwanted kribs off my hands, but how many do you think i will be able to keep ?

and are there current tank makes ok? any essential fish that are needed in the tank?

the tank itself is well planted and has pleanty of swimming room and places to hide and a nice piece of bog wood in the middle, the 7 kribs seem to be enjoying swimming about freely and look happy enough, obvioustly this will change as they get larger and more aggressive but i will look for those tell tale signs.

any advice would be much apriciated, thank you

[steve p]

Hi bahney, I've got a pair of kribs in one of my tanks at the moment. When there breeding they get agressive towards the other tank mates. Mine are in with tiger barbs and a bristlenose plec and it works ok. I would wait for a pair to form then remove the others as for tank mates the betta and the dwarf gourami would only be the ones i would worry about, but as with all fish it depends on the individual.

Hope this helps Steve.

[fishkid951]

1male and 2females sound ok. They shouldn't be agressive until a bit older tho. They may start terrorising eachother but prob not the other tank mates...
PS.Just curious to no....how do the glass shrimp go with the clown loaches??

[Bahney]

clown loach and the shrimp seem fine, the shrimp is pregnant at the minute though and has a belly full of eggs so she hasent been out much she just hides under some bogwood and releases all her eggs and gathers them all up again and moves them around in her belly which is very cool to watch the eggs are green coloured so you can see them really well.

the clown loach is only small though about 4cm, they often sniff each other out and have a good look but so far neither has had any problems and they seem to be getting on fine. i think he is to preoccupied eating all my snails, (he is one of the less lazy fish, lol)

my clown and bristlenose seem to get on well they hang about in the same caves all the time so there is a bond between them i think, lol but the shrimp is a bit of a loner

if anything my gourami is the one that causes my shrimp the most problems, lol he is forever going upto her and then flicking away and swimming fast almost slapping her in the face with his tail she gets all annoyed and scurries about a bit and then goes back to where she was hiding, lol

my kribs have settled in really well and seem to be enjoying the freedom of the tank, already there seems to be one dominant krib, who is slightly larger then the rest and they all swim in a pack behind the big one, they are amazing to watch and because they are so small they seem to be exploreing every nook and cranny in the tank, lol you can be looking in the tank and all of a sudden a krib pops out of a small gap...how the hell did he get in there? lol and i love watching them swim sideways/backwards and swimming in circles, it reminds me of why i loved these fish many moons ago when i last kept them

I will wait about another 6-7 weeks and see how they all develop and try and single out a good pair and an additional female.

i will sort out some pics asap and put them on here, at the minute the only pics i have are blurred and rubbish i will borrow a better camera tomorow

my sister has a tank as well it is tiny though, only 18X12X12 pretty much only fit for a breeding tank or hospital tank but the lfs sold it to them as a "good community tank to keep upto 30fish!!" so as you would imagine they let it cycle for a whole 10days! before returning to the store and spoke to the same guy that sold them the tank who then sold them around 15fish...one of which is a standard pleco....

anyway thats a diffrent story, to cut to the chase there tank will be empty next week (i have sorted it for them and given all there fish away to sutible homes) and they are starting fresh with my help (something they never asked for originally) and i thought that maybe 1 or 2 of my kribs might be sutible but with the tank being smaller and them being teratorial?? obvioustly once it is fully cycled!!

maybe a krib only tank? with maybe half a dozen friends in there to keep them company?

or will the tank simply be too small ?

[Bahney]

these are the rubbish pictures, lol

first one is an attempted close up and the second one is a general idea of tank layout and i have circled a few of them

[Bahney]

better picture :)

[Bahney]

I came home form work tonight and there was a bit of a frenzy in the tank and nearly all the kribs were chaseing each other in circles and zipping all over the tank, once i fed them they settled down a bit but after around 30min i noticed a lot fo movement again...these are the things i have observed

2 of them almost kissing each other face to face but very agressivly as if headbutting each other then as soon as one of them moves to the side the other sucks it on the side and it shoots off (attempt at being the superior fish? maybe?)

another one seemed to be completly white and had no colour to it (i thought it was in distress and was going to remove it from the tank!) but as soon as i put the net into the tank it shot off at speed and regained full colour immediatly, within 2seconds it went from completly white to being normally coloured! was like a camelion lizard!...i assume this little fella was stressed??

any ideas what i should do? it is becoming very obvious that 7 kribs in this tank won't last much longer but fear or removing the wrong ones is making me think twice about removing any!

they all appear to be the same size and apart from one or 2 showing a redder colouration to the belly they are very hard to sex at the minute and none of them appear to be pairing off!

they have gone from schooling peacefully together to all out war in the space of 12hours!!


any ideas to calm them down?

[Bahney]

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