sammy boy

i have a 55 gallon tank with 2 arulius barbs and one rainbow shark and 1 baby pleco. what else should i get it looks so empty because there all baby's. also there are snails in the tank what fish eats snails?

TFA101

loaches like the yo yo loach will eat snails., but they may quarrel with the rainbow shark or vice versa

Sam Livingston

Puffers are the kings of snail eating, but in freshwater tank your choices are limited. My puffers usually eat atleast 10 a day each.

clinton1621

Puffers are also agressive and dont mix well...
With barbs you would be best to stick with more barbs... they like big groups, and it also lessens stress and possible aggression between them and other fish in the tank. Cory cats would probably be a good addition as well, they like to school together... so you could get about six of them for a good bottom cleanup crew =)

sammy boy

acctually after i posted this i went out to dinner and stoped at petsmart. so now i have two arulius barbs two bala sharks one rainbow shark one pleco and two african dwarf frogs they all look really happy no chasing or nipping the two barbs have stayed together for about 2 months now no problem. my only question is what do the frogs eat. ive heard blood worms but anything else? and they are all babys

clinton1621

Hmm... I'm definitely not a frog expert lol... I think they will eat sinking food, bloodworms, feeder fish and probably some other stuff that I dont know about lol.

sammy boy

lol cool because i have a huge thing of blood worms. but the arulius barb used to eat flakes untill the one day i gave them some blood worms now they completely ignore the flakes and as soon as a blood worm hits the top BAM its on.

clinton1621

Lol, my fish are exactly the same way... they will mostly only eat bloodworms and brine shrimp, they look at the flakes and swim off like "yeah right". I do find that they will eat a few flakes if I put them in at the exact same time as the brine shrimp, but they wont touch them otherwise now.

sammy boy

oh really maybe ill try that that way they get the nutrients they need. so does my tank sound good? any sugestions or anything?

clinton1621

Hmm... if they are acting good and seem healthy, then I see no problems with it. I think the balas and the red tailed shark can sometimes not get along, but thats not a guarantee that yours wont =) You may eventually need a bigger tank a year or so from now when they start getting closer to adult sizes... but that gives you plenty of time to learn about how they behave, and plenty of time to save money for a bigger tank lol.

Again, I'm not a frog expert... I dont know if any of those fish like frog legs on their menus LOL!

sammy boy

haha yeah i hope not but yeah i knoe the fish will get bigger and ill get a 150 or 200 for em. thats crazy thought that they get 1 foot!

clinton1621

Yeah the Balas can get up to 15 inches, I think the RTS is only about half of that fully grown lol