[Livvie15]

I have a tropical tank I'm running down and was wondering if any of the following would survive my peacocks, Mbuna, clown loaches, and red tail shark:

- Dwarf rainbow fish
- Penguin tetra
- Cardinal tetra
- Corydoras
- Amano shrimp
- Pentazona barb
- Khuli loach
- Giant African shrimp?

Thanks.

 

[DJRansome]

Just the rainbows.

 

[Livvie15]

Just the rainbows.

Even though they are dwarfs?

 

[Livvie15]

Will the giant African shrimp get eaten even though he is HUGE? Thanks

 

[sir_keith]

Just the rainbows.

Even though they are dwarfs?

Maybe, but they are not as robust as most rainbows. Personally, I wouldn't chance it.

 

[Livvie15]

My penguins are actually bigger than my dwarfs. But i guess it's more speed and hardiness than size?

 

[DJRansome]

The crustaceans get eaten when they molt. They just have to have a couple bites to kill them, the Malawi don't have to be able to swallow them whole. Aggression is more of a factor than size, even within the Malawi species.

Also most of those fish need different water parameters than the harder water you would provide for the Malawi.

 

[BC in SK]

I think it likely that none of these would do well with mbuna.

Just the rainbows.

Even though they are dwarfs?

I can only give my brief experience with the common box store Australian Rainbowfish ( Melanotaenia fluviatilis?) which not only gets considerably larger then dwarf rainbows but are generally considered to be hardier, more boisterous and more outgoing. IMO and IME, completely unsuitable tank mate for mbuna. It took no more then 3 months in my 75 gal. with yellow labs and a few deamsoni, and they stopped swimming the tank out of fear.They were not doing well. A couple got killed and I removed the rest to my 29 gal. that had very, very young demasoni. The Rainbows could have actually eaten the demasoni to begin with; they were considerably larger then the baby demasoni. The Australian rainbows did well and grew for about 6 months until the demasoni got to be around an 1" long. Even though demasoni this small do not even weigh 1 gram and these rainbows would have been around the 3" size and over 5 grams each, they became very fearful and obviously uncomfortable with their tank mates. They all got killed off in a matter of a few weeks by the tiny demasoni.
Full grown of some species of Australian Rainbowfish, maybe, but I really have my doubts that Dwarf rainbows would fare better then any on this list (In fact, I would tend to think they would be among the 1st to go).

 

[noki]

The Malawi cichlids, especially Mbuna, just stress really out these smaller schooling fish especially if the cichlids are larger. It really isn't "aggression" like how cichlids fight with similar cichlids, the cichlids mostly ignore the different types of fish, but the schooling fish are freaked out by cichlids constant token chasing and territoriality. Tetras can panic, and when they panic they attract attacks because they are vulnerable. Cichlids can attack the shrimp if vulnerable, cichlids are opportunistic.

 

[sir_keith]

Almost everyone is saying the same thing- the Rainbows will eventually succumb to stress.

 

[Livvie15]

Okay thank you. Everyone, as I expected really! I will not risk any of these then. Some of my colleagues said they will take some off of me so that's good.