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Animal Combinations; Mixed exhibits questions
Topic Started: Nov 23 2014, 09:51 PM (123,701 Views)
Fireplume
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Snok Snok Snerson

Depends on what you're going for.
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ZoologicalBotanist
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Could Aripamas be placed in a mixed species tank with guppies, corydoras and discus? I am trying to build an Amazon River tank.
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stargatedalek
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ZoologicalBotanist
Feb 22 2018, 07:03 PM
Could Aripamas be placed in a mixed species tank with guppies, corydoras and discus? I am trying to build an Amazon River tank.
You would never see the others since they would spend all their time hiding and would be so small anyway.

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Furka
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Arapaimas need a lot of room, and the other fish would be too small to be noticeable (discus prolly get in the size range where they could be seen as food too).
Your best tankmates for pimas would be other large aggressive species like arowana, pacu, large catifsh and river stingray.
Manatees, turtles and small caimans could go too.
Edited by Furka, Feb 23 2018, 07:57 AM.
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stargatedalek
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!

Even arowana probably don't get large enough. Only the true giants would safe and at that point you're looking at a $10k fish or more, I wouldn't mix arowana with anything larger than themselves.
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ZoologicalBotanist
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Thanks for the advice! Lately, I’ve also been considering making a reboot of the extinct zoo I started a while back. Are there any specific species you would recommend for a mixed exhibit of the Permian to Triassic era? Other combinations from other eras would be welcomed, as long as there are no sauropods, them being far to big for me to feel comfortable housing.
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Fireplume
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stargatedalek
Feb 23 2018, 11:49 AM
Even arowana probably don't get large enough. Only the true giants would safe and at that point you're looking at a $10k fish or more, I wouldn't mix arowana with anything larger than themselves.
I'm sorry but what? Lol every tank I've seen with Arapaima has also had Arowana (usually Silver), Red-tailed Catfish, Tambaqui, and your typical large Amazonian River fish.

California Academy of Sciences actually DOES combine their Arapaima with tiny cichlids, silver dollars, and a few other barely noticeable fish too. Their Amazon tank is by far the best I've seen. As Furka said, turtles work really well too, especially the giant Yellow-spotted Amazon River Turtle.
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stargatedalek
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Fireplume
Feb 24 2018, 09:45 PM
stargatedalek
Feb 23 2018, 11:49 AM
Even arowana probably don't get large enough. Only the true giants would safe and at that point you're looking at a $10k fish or more, I wouldn't mix arowana with anything larger than themselves.
I'm sorry but what? Lol every tank I've seen with Arapaima has also had Arowana (usually Silver), Red-tailed Catfish, Tambaqui, and your typical large Amazonian River fish.

California Academy of Sciences actually DOES combine their Arapaima with tiny cichlids, silver dollars, and a few other barely noticeable fish too. Their Amazon tank is by far the best I've seen. As Furka said, turtles work really well too, especially the giant Yellow-spotted Amazon River Turtle.
I've been there, that tank is impressive but it has a lot of fish in it, I can't imagine it would be the same if the arapaima were the only large fish. That tank works because it has such sheer variety of fish in it that they force each other to be docile and it has ample hiding space for medium sized fish.

A tank that is just large enough for the arapaima and doesn't house any other large fish probably shouldn't contain any medium sized fish.

I admit I was thinking of Asian arowana too, silver are typically far more nimble (and also significantly less expensive to acquire).
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Furka
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Worth mentioning that arowana are strict surface dwellers, so they wouldn't really be bothered by bottom-dwelling species like catfish and rays. Rays and aros are in fact a common combo even in small tanks exactly because they occupy different spaces (also done with Asian aros although not geographically correct).
Edited by Furka, Feb 25 2018, 05:11 AM.
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Anton
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stargatedalek
Feb 25 2018, 12:01 AM
A tank that is just large enough for the arapaima and doesn't house any other large fish probably shouldn't contain any medium sized fish.
This isn't really relevant in the question "can they be combined or not" though, given that in 99% of the cases, an exhibit that is only just large enough for any species probably shouldn't contain any other species.
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stargatedalek
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Anton
Feb 25 2018, 09:32 AM
stargatedalek
Feb 25 2018, 12:01 AM
A tank that is just large enough for the arapaima and doesn't house any other large fish probably shouldn't contain any medium sized fish.
This isn't really relevant in the question "can they be combined or not" though, given that in 99% of the cases, an exhibit that is only just large enough for any species probably shouldn't contain any other species.
It was relevant because the original question was "can these smaller fish be added to a dedicated arapaima tank" not "can these fish theoretically coexist with arapaima in a tank intended for this".
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Anton
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If you read the question again, but slowly this time, I think you'll find the question is the exact opposite: he asked if an arapaima could be placed in a mixed species tank with smaller fish.

However, I think we're both intelligent enough to realize that he didn't mean this as putting an arapaima in a dedicated tank for those smaller fish (because an arapaima is oftentimes twice as long as a tank for those species to begin with), so logically the purpose of the question was to figure out whether or not they could be combined.
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stargatedalek
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Anton
Feb 25 2018, 04:06 PM
If you read the question again, but slowly this time, I think you'll find the question is the exact opposite: he asked if an arapaima could be placed in a mixed species tank with smaller fish.

However, I think we're both intelligent enough to realize that he didn't mean this as putting an arapaima in a dedicated tank for those smaller fish (because an arapaima is oftentimes twice as long as a tank for those species to begin with), so logically the purpose of the question was to figure out whether or not they could be combined.
Again, that doesn't make what I said irrelevant.

Combining large fish with smaller fish is always risky, the risks are minimized greatly when there are several species of similarly sized fish because the presence of other large fish keeps them from taking risks and leads to calmer behavior overall.

You shouldn't combine just arapaima with any fish that would be natural food for them, combining arapaima, and large catfish, and pacu, and rays, and large eels, and some fish that arapaima would naturally eat is a very different situation.
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Anton
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I agree, as a whole all the points you've mentioned are definitely not irrelevant, and mainly true; combining arapaimas with anything, though the combination is common in zoos, is always a risk.

However, the quoted sentence saying "if an exhibit is only big enough for species A, it cannot also hold species B" is quite self-explanatory and isn't really that useful to this discussion or this topic as a whole.
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stargatedalek
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I'm not slow! That's just my moe!

stargatedalek
Feb 25 2018, 12:01 AM
A tank that is just large enough for the arapaima and doesn't house any other large fish probably shouldn't contain any medium sized fish.
Stop trying to warp what I said. I didn't say "don't overstock the tank".
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