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Will an African Ropefish live well in a tank with several tiger barbs?

As long as the tank is like 60+ gallons and the barbs are relatively large, it should work out. The Ropefish will probably need to be feed separately from the barbs, though.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Well, define feed seperatly... The barbs are from medium to full grown.

Ropefish are not very competitive feeders, and if you get one you will have to give it live and frozen foods (mainly invertebrates like worms and arthropods) at the bottom of the tank, and probably after the lights are out as well.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I heard you can feed them bloodworms, but I think the barbs will try and eat his food. What is a good way to get the food to him.

-Soidfuf

Frozen krill and earthworms should be accepted by the Ropefish and would probably be too large for the barbs. Also, if you feed after the lights are out, the barbs will probably be less active.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

So if I get one I should feed it frozen krill only at night? I just want the ropefish to get his food.

-Soidfuf

Yes, that should work. If I'm not mistaken, Polypterids can be hand-tamed, so you might be able to feed it easier by hand because you can keep the barbs away.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

ok

Would freeze dried krill be ok too?

They might work, though I've read that much of their nutrition is removed during the freeze-drying process.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I think that I might have to go with the freeze dried because my mom might go nuts with the krill in the freezer. Thanks for all the help.

-Soidfuf

Freeze drying doesn't remove nurients from fish food - or any other material that is freeze dried (for example, the dreaded MRE or 'Meal, Ready to Eat' that used to be in circulation in the US armed forces at one time, and possibly still is for all I know).

Freeze drying works because of an interesting peculiarity of the physics of water. If you freeze water at the rigth temperature, then place the resulting ice in a vacuum chamber, and quickly reduce the pressure inside the chamber, something very unusual happens to the ice - it undergoes a process called 'sublimation'. This occurs when a solid changes state straight to the gas phase without becoming liquid first, and occurs because under certain conditions of temperature and pressure, the boiling point of water actually drops below its melting point!

So, when a block of Tubifex worms, say, is frozen, then planced in a vacuum chmber and subject to a rapid pressure drop, the water present in the ice block (and inside the Tubifex worms too) changes state straight to the gas phase. Provided the pressure drop is controlled, and various ingenious methods of recycling the gas extracted from the chamber are employed, the non-aqueous contents of the food are all left behind when the ice sublimes and becomes low pressure water vapour. So i wouldn't worry too much about nutrient loss from freeze dried Krill.

Incidentally, the first person to apply freeze drying to fish foods was none other than Dr Herbert R. Axelrod of TFH magazine fame. One of the ways in which he made his fortune. This is documented in the old Innes book. I believe he still owns the original patent, and so fish food manufacturers using his original freeze drying technique have to pay him a royalty for its use.

Your Rope Fish should be fine with freeze dried foods if you can persuade it to eat them. I'd solve your problem by feeding the Tiger Barbs just before 'lights out' with something like live Daphnia or flakes,and while they're busy chomping away on that, introduce the other food to where the Rope Fish can find it easily. The moment you turn the lights out, the Tiger Barbs should become relatively inactive, and the Rope Fish can feed.

Alternatively, if the Rope Fish likes eating crustaceans, then one other way of solving the problem is to supply it with live crustaceans that are too big for the Tiger Barbs to eat ... Ghost Shrimp, for example. Given the size that the Rope Fish is capable of reaching (a metre in length is certainly possible!) then the fish will pretty soon reach a size where the food items that it will want to eat are way too big for the Tiger Barbs to tackle!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

One possible trick to get the feeding to work is to use a pipe. Stick the pipe in the water in the general vicinity of your Ropefish, but not close enough to freak it out (clear of course would be best). Put the food in at the top end of the pipe and the food goes down the pipe basically straight to your Ropefish.

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.