Building a community - Understanding Compatibility
One of the many exciting challenges facing new and seasoned aquarists alike, is the process of building an aquarium community of creatures. The Aquarist must have a forward looking perspective to anticipate how a new addition will interact with the aquarium décor, and its’ other inhabitants. Just as in life, we get along with some more than others. Our aquatic friends are no different.
Unlike us, aquatic creatures work off of propensity and instinct, weaving their behaviors together in a complicated dance of life and death. In the aquatic realm the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ is quite literally a mantra of existence. One’s instinctual behavior becomes another’s trigger for attack and likely consumption. And so, life in the aquatic realm is complicated and brimming with uncertainty.
The job of the aquarist is to understand the instinctual actions of potential aquarium occupants, placing creatures together that exhibit similar or complimentary behaviors.
Behavior is a complicated realm and often unable to stand alone as the sole consideration for compatibility. It seems that animal behavior is greatly affected by the environment in which the animal exists. Although an aquarium occupant my have a propensity for burrowing in a sandy floor, an aquarium without a sandy floor will inhibit the occupant from exhibiting this behavior. If burrowing is tied to feeding, the occupant may not engage in their primary feeding method, thus affecting their general health due to malnutrition.
It is this complicated set of interdependencies which aquarium occupants exhibit that is the impetus for this guide.
Compatibility expectations
Determining compatibility between aquarium occupants is difficult. This is not because of the inability to align similarities between occupants. Rather, the difficulty stems from the aquarists’ expectation to see many varied aquarium occupants in a relatively small cubic area.
From the aquarist point of view, the aquarium should be teeming with many varied occupants. Wherever and whenever an aquarist looks into the aquarium, there should be an occupant performing some activity.
After all, the whole setup is rather expensive and there should be some pleasure derived from watching animal behavior.
From the aquarium occupant’s point of view, the more occupants in the tank, the more threats and uncertainties there are that must be responded to. Overcrowding an aquarium represents a significant threat to existing occupants.
So, there is an inverse relationship between the aquarist’s expectations, and the aquarium occupants’ threat levels. To solve this dilemma the aquarist must work within the aquarium environment constraints. If the aquarium has limited volume (30 gals) and is physically small, then the selection of an active fish that can grow to 14″ is probably not appropriate and would create discord and incompatibility with a school of 10 guppies who would soon become meals to the larger fish.
However, an aquarium with 250 gallons and many hiding locations might change the compatibility between the two species. The guppies would be able to hide from the larger fish and behave more like guppies and less like an afternoon meal to the larger fish.
What determines compatibility
In the aquarium biome, compatibility is largely comprised of four areas. They are: Food types, Water chemistry, Species behavior, and Environmental. The closer there is alignment in these areas and their sub-elements, the greater the compatibility potential. Many aquatic occupants will overlap in these areas, or not be specific to a particular element in an area.
However, some occupants are highly specific to an element in an area. It might be a food type, or a behavior that is unique, specialized and species specific. These occupants may either dictate an environmental condition be met, or food be provided. Generally, they are compatible with most other aquarium occupants unless the environmental requirement is too far out of bounds for the balance of the aquarium occupants.
To gain a better understanding of compatibility an examination of the four general areas is needed. A short discussion is helpful to clarify distinctions between elements and identify attributes which an aquarium occupant might have.
The four compatibility sections
In the aquarium biome, compatibility is largely comprised of four areas.
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