rm
Passport
- Family
- Rasbora
- Grows to
- 2 cm (0.8")
- Lives
- 4–8 years
- Temperament
- Peaceful
- Care
- Intermediate
- Swims
- Mid-water
- Keep
- In a group of 8 or more
- Water
- 20–28 °C (68–82 °F)
Indonesia
Care requirements
i
On record for Chili Rasbora: adult size, lifespan, minimum tank, temperature, ph, hardness, minimum group, diet, care level, swim level, tank length.
A figure that is not on record is left out rather than guessed. One marked Suggested comes from keeping knowledge rather than a page.
- Minimum tank 19 L / 5.0 US gal
- pH 4–7
- Hardness 1–10 dGH
- Diet micropredator
- Tank length 45 cm minimum
Care notes written from general aquarium knowledge, not from the cited sources.
About
Chili rasboras are among the smallest fish in the hobby and one of the most intensely coloured. A settled male is translucent red shot through with a darker stripe, glowing against a dark tank like a lit ember.
They're not really rasboras. The genus is Boraras, a group of miniature blackwater cyprinids from Southeast Asia, and their requirements are much narrower than the harlequin rasboras they're sold alongside.
Size is the practical constraint. They're too small to compete with, or safely share a tank with, most standard community fish, and they need food graded down accordingly.
Tank setup
Build your chilis a blackwater tank. Soft, acidic, tea-stained water over a dark substrate, with wood, leaf litter and dense planting, under low light. The colour is almost entirely a response to that setup.
Keep them in a large group. They're shoaling fish that colour up and behave naturally in numbers, and a handful of them in a big tank stays hidden and pale.
Keep the tank small-scale and quiet. A species tank, or one shared with other tiny blackwater fish and dwarf shrimp, is where they thrive.
Add floating plants to shade the surface. They spend most of their time in the middle and lower water and dislike glare.
Never add them to an immature tank. They're sensitive to unstable conditions.
Feeding
Chilis need genuinely tiny food. Their mouths are minute and most "small" prepared foods are too big.
Feed baby brine shrimp, microworm, cyclops, daphnia and finely powdered dried food. Live and frozen should be the mainstay rather than the treat.
Feed little and often. They have almost no capacity and uneaten food fouls a small soft tank quickly.
Avoid: standard flake and micro pellets, most of which they physically cannot eat.
Filtration and flow
Use a sponge filter and keep the flow very gentle. They're weak swimmers from still forest pools.
Guard everything. A fish this small can be drawn into any unprotected intake.
Be careful with water changes. Soft acidic water has little buffering, so match the replacement water and change small amounts often rather than a lot at once.
With plants
Chili rasboras are entirely safe with plants and belong in a heavily planted tank.
Fine-leaved plants, moss and floating cover all matter. They give the fish confidence, and confidence is what produces the colour.
Low-light species are what will grow in the dim, tannin-stained water they need — java fern, moss, crypts and floating plants.
Health
They're sensitive on arrival and hardy once established, and most losses happen in the first fortnight with fish that shipped badly.
Colour is the gauge. A chili that has gone pale and grey is stressed, newly moved, or in water that has drifted — it's a reliable early signal.
They're small enough that anything wrong progresses fast. Act on the first day you notice rather than waiting to see.
Breeding
They spawn continuously in a mature planted tank, scattering a few eggs at a time into moss rather than in one event.
The adults eat eggs and fry, so survival depends entirely on how dense the cover is. In a thick mat of moss in a tank with no other fish, young appear on their own.
For numbers, move conditioned adults to a small tank with moss or a mesh floor and take them out after a day. The fry are among the smallest you'll ever raise and need infusoria or green water before anything else.
Tank mates
Avoid11
- Convict Cichlid Convict Cichlid grows to 15 cm against Chili Rasbora at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Jewel Cichlid Jewel Cichlid grows to 15 cm against Chili Rasbora at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Kribensis Kribensis grows to 8 cm against Chili Rasbora at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Panda Garra Panda Garra grows to 9 cm against Chili Rasbora at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Pictus Catfish Pictus Catfish grows to 12 cm against Chili Rasbora at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
Only with care6
- Chinese Algae Eater Chinese Algae Eater is aggressive and Chili Rasbora is peaceful.
- Bala Shark Bala Shark is a risk to Chili Rasbora: rasbora and sharks are a pairing to watch.
- Paradise Fish Paradise Fish is a risk to Chili Rasbora: large gouramis and rasbora are a pairing to watch.
- Pearl Gourami Pearl Gourami is a risk to Chili Rasbora: large gouramis and rasbora are a pairing to watch.
- Silver Dollar Silver Dollar is a risk to Chili Rasbora: rasbora and silver dollar are a pairing to watch.
No conflict is recorded with the other 89 species in the database, so nothing to flag. 2 species are not covered at all, so they could not be judged either way.