Schooling different tetra
 

I have 2 red minor tetra that came along with a hand me down 20 gal. I want to buy more tetra. Would any other tetra like black phantom school with the red minors?

Red Minor Tetra are also known as Serpae Tetra. No, they prolly will not school so much with other tetra. I have had 2 species of tetras school together before but in my experience there has to be suffiecient numbers of each species for them to feel safe.

@ Ladayen: Thanks a lot. I guess I will get some more of serpae then. Though I am worried to put in smaller ones with these guys.

I would think carefully before buying any more Serpae Tetra. This is not a "community" fish per say. It has a well deserved reputation as a fin nipper, and tankmates must be carefully selected. It's nipping can sometimes be confined to within the group by having 8 or more, but this is not a certainty. And in a 20g, that would be about it for fish.

If you have a good fish store nearby, they might be prepared to take them off your hands. We have fish profiles containing info on fish species, second tab from the left in the blue bar across the top of the page. Or click on the shaded name.

Byron.

Thanks a lot Byron,
I read your post tad too late! I just got 5 serpaes! At least for now they are not nipping at each other, and they have the whole 10 gal for themselves. Once I exchange my goldfish for something else, and empty the 20 gal, I will move the serpaes over to the 20 and make that a dedicated serpae tank.
-Ashish

That will work fine. A group of say 7-9, with some plants, and some substrate fish which are usually left alone. A nice aquascape in a 20g.:-)

I actually have both these species in my tank, red minor and black phantom, and they do school together. Also, like mentioned many of the red minors can be fin nippers, I had to return quite a few before keeping 2 calm ones along with 3 phantoms. They all school togeher much of the time.

I got 5 serpae to school with my 2 older ones, put them in my 20g with 3 cory, but the tetra were too aggressive and nipping like anything. Returned them today and got 6 neons instead. Now my 20g has 6 neons, 6 minnows, 1 sunset gourami, and 3 cory.

This bears out what I frequently say about Serpae Tetra being aggressive. It is always a risk, and may sometimes be OK, but most often not. Glad you were able to resolve things, sounds good.

Byron.

Yeah! They were good boys for a week and then suddenly they did a turnaround! I am happy they are gone before other the fish got stressed!