Peppermint Pikehead tank mates

Oddballhunter12 · Aug 26, 2023

I’ve been thinking on getting a peppermint pike head for a while now but I’m not sure what can suitably live with them. I particularly love ambush predators and I have tanks dedicated to them. Such as the Asian leaf fish and rocket gar. My oddball tank is around 80 gallons and has an Asian leaf fish 2 juvenile rocket gar which will soon be moved to a larger tank. A single large angel fish 1 Sengal bichir that is also being raised for my larger tank. A brown ghost knife fish and a Peruvian flounder. Note all my fish are roughly 4 inches minimum. So I was wondering if I move the gars if a pikehead would be an equally unique replacement. This tank has not shown any signs of aggression and the fish that live in it coexist peacefully.

Fishman Dave · Aug 27, 2023

You will need to be looking at quite a low ph tank, possibly below 6 to keep the peppermint happy, planted and with good surface plant cover. Also a little more flow than may be expected. Should be able to keep it with rasbora, some barbs, loaches and gourami. That’s if you can get hold of one.

Oddballhunter12 · Aug 29, 2023

thanks for the info though my only question is wouldn’t it eat the rasboras? It’s a natural ambush predator that has a larger mouth than most leaf fish do. I’m alright with feeding live prey to ambush predators but I feel it’s quite expensive to put rasboras with an animal that will without doubt eat them. Just wondering is all.

fishhead0103666 · Aug 29, 2023

Fishman Dave said:
You will need to be looking at quite a low ph tank, possibly below 6 to keep the peppermint happy, planted and with good surface plant cover. Also a little more flow than may be expected. Should be able to keep it with rasbora, some barbs, loaches and gourami. That’s if you can get hold of one.