Name That Tropical Fish

[petersLUFC]

Hi Folks,

Can someone assist me in identifying these fish I’ve had in my aquarium for the past year?

I was given them by a mate who bought a 2nd hand tank but didn’t want the fish in it so I adopted them (along with some Opaline Gouramis, Serpea tetras, black neon tetras)

The fish in question are about 2-3 times the size of anything else in the tank but have been quite well behaved until now. I can't find any pictures of anything online that looks anything like them. I thought they might be a sort of red tailed shark but the mouth shape is different. They're about 4 inches long by an inch or so high.

The reason I’m trying to find out now is that I added 5 neons last weekend that seem to have disappeared one by one. No sign of them dead on the bottom or floating around anywhere either, so I’m stumped. I’ve moved all the plants around, checked inside the hiding places etc, nothing. I also added 5 Platys that are all still alive and kicking (or swimming)

Is it possible that these big bad boys have been tucking into the new neons? They seem pretty aggressive and always have done as they dart around the tank quite fast knocking into the other fish but it never presented a problem, no sign of nipped fins on other fish etc. The strange thing is I’ve got glowlight tetras that were in the tank before I introduced the unknown beasts. The glowlights are a similar size to the neons I added and they haven't been bothered
Can someone tell from this crappy picture what breed they are? I'd really appreciate it (Doesn't help the eaten neons but I’ll know for future fish buying)

Cheers
http://thumbsnap.com/v/XtGqn9GF.jpg


EDIT - why in the sodding hell can't i link an image from thumbsnap (using the image uploader) but if i nick someones code from a tinypic image and use that it works? Quote my post and you'll see my thumbsnap code in there that i've tried (also tried the one that the image uploader generates and that shows nothing too)

Edited by petersLUFC on Saturday 13th February 02:20

Edited by petersLUFC on Saturday 13th February 02:20

[smash_bannana]

looks like a pink tailed characin to me.

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en...

http://fish.mongabay.com/species/Chalceus_macrolep...

[petersLUFC]

smash_bannana said:

looks like a pink tailed characin to me.

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en...

http://fish.mongabay.com/species/Chalceus_macrolep...

Good work!

They seem to be pretty tough fish and by the sounds of it could definitely be the cause of my disappearing neons

When i moved house before christmas, whilst moving the tank and removing the fish one of them decided to make a break for freedom and jumped straight out of the plastic box i'd put the fish in. He survived a fall of about 2 feet and flapped about on the laminate floor but was right as rain and has been ever since.

Edited by petersLUFC on Saturday 13th February 02:39

[smash_bannana]

petersLUFC said:

smash_bannana said:

looks like a pink tailed characin to me.

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en...

http://fish.mongabay.com/species/Chalceus_macrolep...

Good work!

They seem to be pretty tough fish and by the sounds of it could definitely be the cause of my disappearing neons

When i moved house before christmas, whilst moving the tank and removing the fish one of them decided to make a break for freedom and jumped straight out of the plastic box i'd put the fish in. He survived a fall of about 2 feet and flapped about on the laminate floor but was right as rain and has been ever since.

Edited by petersLUFC on Saturday 13th February 02:39

my bro has one in a 7 foot tank and 2 tiddlers growing on in a smaller tank. meant to be worth few quid actually.

[petersLUFC]

I've got two of them and they're always nice and active, always bombing about scaring the gouramis