Wraping Up Stock

[Aquastrategist]

Hi, I have a 50 gallon planted tank with
6 juvenile rainbows
14 Neons
2 Angels
6 Cories
Sometime in the future, the rainbows will be moved out, thinking about how to finish my stock. My water temp is around 78, ph is 7.6 all fish are fine so far, not a single death this whole time except for a neon. I was thinking to get some otos to finish it up. Does this sound good? Any other suggestions?

 

[Mrs.h2012]

Hi, I have a 50 gallon planted tank with
6 juvenile rainbows
14 Neons
2 Angels
6 Cories
Sometime in the future, the rainbows will be moved out, thinking about how to finish my stock. My water temp is around 78, ph is 7.6 all fish are fine so far, not a single death this whole time except for a neon. I was thinking to get some otos to finish it up. Does this sound good? Any other suggestions?

How long have you had the tank? I've never had oto's, Librarygirl has I'm pretty sure. I do remember that oto's do need an established and mature tank.

 

[Eli]

I would be a bit worried about the angels eating the neons too. I know some people have kept them successfully together but as neons are the angels natural diet in the wild I'm not sure i would risk it - how about cardinals instead?

 

[Eli]

Oops sorry didn't realise you already got the neons (note to self, read question properly next time!) I guess if you've had no trouble so far with them maybe the angels don't associate them with food and you'll be fine . I do vaguely remember reading somewhere when I was researching my tank that angels will try to eat otos too - or pretty much anything that they can fit in their mouths :/

 

[Rivercats]

Angels often get a bad wrap about eating little fish. This just isn't totally correct. Now I will say if by chance someone were to get a wild caught angel or some of the wild caught mixes they could have some real issues with keeping small fish. But most angels available today don't get near as large as the original wild caughts. All that being said the only issues I've found from angels in the 30+ years I've kept them has almost exclusively come from very aggressive large mature adult males. They just sometimes get so aggressive they go after everything and little fish are easy targets. BUT this is not very common. Right now I have 12 adult breeding angels in a tank with alot of small fish including 18 oto's and about 20ish very small cardinal tetra's. There are also a few Rachovii killifish in the tank that are very small also. The angels don't see other fish as food but shrimp are fair game. Alot depends on the individual personalities of the angels but for the most part when angels are raised around little fish they tend not to pay any attention to them. So IMO getting Oto's would be fine. One thing tho, after acclimating them, when your ready to put them in the tank, feed the angels at the opposite end of the tank a second before adding the oto's. Angels are curious and it's best to distract them when adding new fish of any kind.