Andrzej Zabawski
Growing to more than 4 feet in length, red-tail catfish Phractocephalus hemioliopterus can
only be kept in tanks that hold many hundreds of gallons.
pane, and then fill in around them with
substrate so the little aquatic engineers can’t
dig underneath them. It’s also helpful to secure
rockwork together by means of aquarium-safe
silicone or plastic tie wraps.
Larger fish species should always be kept
in proportionally large tanks, as they are
generally constructed of proportionally
thicker glass. As for your friend’s red-tail
catfish, assuming it survived the catastrophe,
a proportionally large tank for it would be in
the many hundreds of gallons—basically an
indoor pond. However, I would wait until he
gets his floor cleaned up and repaired before
springing that little nugget on him!
Community or
Species Tank?
I’m setting up a 40-gallon
freshwater aquarium (my first),
and I could use some advice on whether it’s
better to start with a community tank or to
specialize in just one species.
Fay Shisler
via email
Well, this is definitely one of
those in-the-eye-of-the-beholder
situations because you can have a
wonderful aquarium either way. I
A community aquarium, to state the obvious,
allows you to keep a wider variety of species,
albeit generally in smaller numbers. That
means you have the opportunity to enjoy an eye-
Q
A
pleasing diversity of colors, shapes, and activity
levels, assuming you have a suitably sized tank.
On the downside, since the typical
community tank combines small numbers of
many different species—often hailing from
very different geographic regions—you’re
more apt to experience compatibility issues
and it can be challenging to provide water
conditions that are suitable, not just tolerable,
for all the species in question. Then again, if
you’re careful in choosing peaceful species
that can adapt to a relatively wide range of
pH and hardness values (or that occupy the
same range in nature and, hence, are adapted
to identical water chemistry), this challenge
can be overcome easily enough.
A single-species tank, on the other hand,
allows you to tailor the aquarium environment
more precisely to meet the needs of a particular
species rather than approximate the needs of
several species. This tends to bring out more
natural behaviors and can be a real boon if
you aim to breed the species. It’s also generally
easier to keep schooling species in appropriate
numbers in a single-species tank versus a
community tank housing a little of everything.
The obvious downside to the species tank is
that it’s very limiting in terms of diversity,
which some might find boring, especially
when they’re just getting started in the hobby
and there are just so many beautiful species
to tempt you at the local fish store. But then,
one could justifiably argue that there’s nothing
boring about watching a large, shimmering,
always shifting school of, say, neon tetras
with a tank all to themselves compared to a
handful of specimens competing for space in
a community tank. D
Tropical Fish Hobbyist www.tfhmagazine.com
