Fishes / Habitat
The rainbow shark, despite the cheerful name, carries a fairly plain grey-black body offset by vivid red or orange fins, with the name referring more to the fin colour than any rainbow pattern across
The rainbow shark, despite the cheerful name, carries a fairly plain grey-black body offset by vivid red or orange fins, with the name referring more to the fin colour than any rainbow pattern across the body. It comes from Thailand and reaches around twelve to fifteen centimetres.
It is genuinely territorial, particularly towards other bottom-dwelling or similarly shaped fish, and this is worth taking seriously rather than treating as an exaggeration, since a rainbow shark will actively claim and defend a territory within the tank once settled.
A single rainbow shark does well in a tank of a hundred litres or more, with caves, driftwood and rockwork to establish a territory in, along with open swimming space elsewhere in the tank. It tolerates a wide range of water conditions, including typical Indian tap water.
Keeping only one rainbow shark per tank is the standard, sensible advice, since two will typically fight, sometimes seriously, for dominance of the available territory.
An omnivorous diet of good-quality flakes or pellets, supplemented with occasional live or frozen food and algae wafers, suits it well. It is a strong grazer of algae as a juvenile, though this decreases somewhat as it matures.
Tankmates are best chosen among mid to upper water column fish that will not compete directly for bottom territory, since ground-level or similarly shaped fish are the most likely targets of its territorial behaviour.
Article content © Ravi Teja. All rights reserved.
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