Overly aggressive shark

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tampa

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Aug 9, 2006
Messages
50
I'm having a problem in one of my 55 gallon tanks.
The original inhabitants of the tank were 6 Angel fish (approx 1/2$ size, not including fins), 3 clown loaches, 2 yo yo loaches,1 small cory, 1 syno,1 pleco, and 2 Labeo crythrurus( black shark with ALL fins being red
Since I wanted 'live food' for the Angels, I went and bought 3 (1m/2f) red swordtails.The following day 1 male and 1 female were gone. The followqing week I went to a different lfs and bought another male and another female. Following day, same thing, both new fish were gone. They did NOT jump out of the tank. Last week I bought 5 Serpea Tetras. The following day 2 were gone.
I have tried to watch the tank for aggressiveness and the only thing that I see is the red finned black shark does chase the remainig swordtail and the Serpeas, however he/she never catches them nor does he /she nip at them. From what I have read, these sharks are not an aggressive fish. If it isn't the shark, who would be the "killer"? I don't want to keep throwing out money by buying fish that another fish is going to kill, but I do want other fish in there. I'm thinking of putting the shark in with my Malawis (zebras).
Your thoughts please. Do you think the shark is the culprit????
Will the bvlack shark survive with the Mbuna ???
 
Sharks usually are fin nippers.. and will chase fish to the point of exhaustion.. but wont do anything past that... depending on how big your pleco is.. he could be eating them.. (they get carnivorous when they hit around the 5-6" level... and get really aggressive at night..)

Angels could be beating them down to the point the pleco gets them... and the sharks could be finishing off whats left.. its really anyones guess to be honest with you.

How are you acclimating the fish to the tank?
 
It sounds like to me the angels are the killers. There have been known cases of grumpy angels that like tetra/swordtail flesh. That is who i think did it. It has happened to me with the angels eating my swordtails/platies.
 
6 angels in a 55 gallon tank is a aggressive sounding situation.. but i dont know if a half dollar sized angel will be able to take down a molly...
 
the the red tail sharks are aggressive. while they wont kill anything like michael says but they will go after them until they die. first thing i would do is QT the new fish. this makes sure they are healthy and you are not putting sick fish into your tank. with out qting its hard to rule it was just sick/weak when you got it.
 
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