Firefish

[rtgordon]

Are these a schooling fish? By that, I mean are they happier in numbers? Should I have more than one in my tanK? Will orange firefish hang out with purple firefish? I have looked into it... liveaquaria says that they can fight with members of the same species unless they are a mated pair and the LFS said that they are happier in numbers...

[ruhspolostar]

they are not necesaarily schoolers, but they will hang out, and they are cool in numbers, I don't know if certain species are agessiv but I have seen tanks with several of them

[rtgordon]

Thanks!

that's what i figured... just because they can doesn't mean that they will. i think that liveaquaria take a very conservative approach to fish recommendations.

[ruhspolostar]

you will find that the opinion on liveaquaria here is very diffeent from prson to person, personally I haven't tried them but I have used them for reearch before & later found out it wasn't exactly true, if I ever try an online dealer it will probablly be www.marinedepot.com only because they ship from Anaheim which is about a 30 minute drive & if I had to I could pick up myself

[Alice]

Firefish will kind of hang out together, even those of differing sp. but if you are going to have a group, you need to have enough to spread out the aggression among them. They will establish a pecking order and will harrass the weaker fish so a group of at least 5 is in order so no one fish gets picked on too much. Even then you may still end up with some of them being harrassed to death. I wouldn't try it in a tank of under 75 gallons or 5' long to give them cover if aggression becomes a problem.

You'll definitely need to put an eggcrate cover on the tank to keep them all from jumping out.