A hand-me-down rainbow shark is coming... what to do?

[cwt]

Wow. In 6 months I have gone from fish noob to the person who people take their unwanted fish to.

My stepmom, a schoolteacher, keeps a small tank in her classroom and apparently she has a rainbow shark in it that can't wait for summer break to be moved. The thing's 5 inches long, and the tank is a 5-gallon. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "They just seem to grow for me", she says.

So the question is, if I make some room in my 29G freshwater tank for this guy by taking some of the smaller fish elsewhere, will it work? Do these fish generally get along with others?

 

[ScottS]

Any other bottom dwellers in the tank? Give it a cave or hollow decoration of sorts to claim as territory.

I'm trying to picture a 5" rainbow shark in a 5 gallon tank, can't be pretty. Does he have tank mates in the 5?

 

[cwt]

Sounds like there are other fish in the 5 gallon.

My 29 gallon has a few cory cats, and the cherry barbs which also tend to hang out in the bottom to middle water. There is a large dark space between the driftwood and the java ferns in the back which I hope will suffice as a 'cave' of sorts.