Hey everyone, i just set up a 10gallon tank to house my african butterfly fish after he attacked one of my danios in my other community tank. He's doing fine now all alone but the tank is alittle empty with just a butterfly fish chilling at the top. I need to be careful, i can't get anything too small that would attract my butterfly fish, but it's only a 10 gallon. I was thinking of a single dwarf gourami...but i'm also taking my time with this little 10 gallon so i'm real open to any suggestions!
10g african Butterfly fish...stocking options
- Thread starter djblac
- Start date
i'm not expirienced enough to offer suggestions, and i don't know anything about butterfly fish, but i saw some at petco and they are SO COOL! is he hard to take care of? i'd love to have one someday.
i really LOVE my African butterfly, but you just need to be mindful of their size and eating habits. They don't swim too often, just sit waiting for a cricket to fall into the water, which by the way they LOVE and i think it's very necessary to feed them live foods to really make them happy. Mine is very tame, tame enough to take flake from my fingers but he nipped the tail clean off one of my danios. It (WAS) a long fin danio, and I'm certain it was the long flowing fin that attracted him to attack. Kinda of hard to keep with other fish because he is a fragile medium sized predator.
Really a 10 gallon isn't suited for it long term. It's fine for a holding tank, but IMO they need a bit more room than that. I know they seem to just sit there, and they aren't that big, but they do need a larger teritory to be happy. Why not oust the danios to the 10, and put the ABF back in the 55? You should know now that they will kill anything small enough to fit in thier mouths 
Thats a good idea....set up the danios in a little 10gal community, and turn the 55 into a cichlid tank.
edit: wouldn't go with african cichlids I guess, they don't like the hard water like africans do. You could do severums or rams or angels though.
edit: wouldn't go with african cichlids I guess, they don't like the hard water like africans do. You could do severums or rams or angels though.
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Mhm, a 10g is too small for a long term solution. My butterfly fish was about 5" long, and he could have reached 6".
I would avoid a dwarf gourami, though. They can be nippy and those butterflies have such beautiful long "tentacles".
Maybe you could get something that stays along the bottom, like dwarf (not pygmy) cories. But I would move him out of that tank anyway.
I would avoid a dwarf gourami, though. They can be nippy and those butterflies have such beautiful long "tentacles".
Maybe you could get something that stays along the bottom, like dwarf (not pygmy) cories. But I would move him out of that tank anyway.
Just an aside, danios are quite active, and a 10 is not the best habitat for them, but I think given the choice between the danios, or the ABF in the 10, I would do the danios. If you must keep the ABF in the 10, I would recoment iether no other tankmates, or if anything one mabey two smaller BOTTOM DWELLERS.
wow a 6 inch butterfly, my guy is at most 4 inchs right now but i thought he was full grown! I love the feeding frenzy he has over crickets :Angel: so i'm very willing to move him to a bigger tank as he needs it, but right now he appears very content in the corner of the 10 gallon. I put some floating hortwort plants in there and he hides right in the thickest of it, but that is exactly what he did in the 55g. I don't ever plan on moving him back to the 55g because i'm working on building up a rainbow fish (as centerpiece) community tank, and he took a bit off one of my golden honey gourami juvi and...well that was the straw that broke and got him in the 10g