Basilisk With Freshwater Fish?

[Kamau]

Hey, I know a lot of people do this but they never explain how they do it, or whether or not they're successful. I have my own set of questions for those of you who could help me.

I've been keeping reptiles for five years now, and I've been raised with fish tanks my entire life, so I have a decent amount of experience on both sides. I plan on getting a basilisk and having half of the enclosure floor terrestrial and the other half aquatic with a gradual slope to, at maximum, a foot deep. I plan on housing small invertebrates (or fish if anyone can suggest some) such as ghost shrimp and such, also really wanting some tetras but I'm sketchy on those. My goal is to have animals that the basilisk won't register as food, be hardy to small, daily water changes, and also easy to replace in case some die off. I don't want anything that will add too much to an already excessive bio-load, and preferably will help break down the waste into something the plants can utilize.

I don't want to sacrifice the lizard's health for a fish tank, and I also don't want to set the fish up for almost guaranteed death. If anyone can point me in the right direction, it'd be appreciated.

 

[SnakeIce]

Unfortunately I think it would only take one time of the lizard expelling waste into the water to seriously hurt your fish. You might make this work if you have a water source you can run continuous new flow into and drain out of the tank since that would dilute any spikes caused by the lizard.

One of the reasons an ex reptile tank, even if it is designed to hold water, is not recommended for use as a fish tank is that the levels of ammonia in the waste of the reptiles is that it is to hard to get the ammonia out of the tank. Even surface cleaning doesn't remove it all, and enough seeps out into the water to cause problems after the tank normally would be good.

 

[Kamau]

Unfortunately I think it would only take one time of the lizard expelling waste into the water to seriously hurt your fish. You might make this work if you have a water source you can run continuous new flow into and drain out of the tank since that would dilute any spikes caused by the lizard.

One of the reasons an ex reptile tank, even if it is designed to hold water, is not recommended for use as a fish tank is that the levels of ammonia in the waste of the reptiles is that it is to hard to get the ammonia out of the tank. Even surface cleaning doesn't remove it all, and enough seeps out into the water to cause problems after the tank normally would be good.

Ah, well that's disappointing but I thought in a larger pond that wouldn't be a major concern. I plan on making the pond roughly 75-gallons (give or take a little, I'm not good with numbers), and I had assumed that in that large of water with some hardy fish I'd be good to go. I understand that the basilisk will cause excessive stress on the ammonia levels in the pond, which is a major concern of mine but a disappointment regardless.

My brother was actually just telling me about a system that involved water constantly being replaced in the tank, and had even suggested an algae scrubber to help. I haven't tried the prior method yet, but I'm well-versed with the latter so I might be able to try it out.

I think what I'll do is just test these methods out with my animal before I put any live fish or plants in there and see if I can find a way to have safe drinking/bathing water for the lizard, and fish that won't go into a crap-coma when I put them in.

 

[SnakeIce]

Yeah, play with it and you might come up with a system that works well enough to have fish. I'm not versed on what size that lizard is and that may be ok included in the bioload of the tank. You'd have to stock it lightly since the lizard would be partially included in the "stocking" if you get it to that point.