rm
Passport
- Family
- Flying Fox
- Grows to
- 16 cm (6.3")
- Temperament
- Aggressive
- CareSuggested
- Intermediate
- Swims
- On the bottom
- Keep
- One is fine
- Water
- 20–26 °C (68–79 °F)
ThailandMalaysiaIndonesia
Care requirements
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On record for Flying Fox: adult size, temperature, ph, hardness, minimum group, diet, care level, swim level, tank length.
Not on record for Flying Fox: lifespan, minimum tank.
A figure that is not on record is left out rather than guessed. One marked Suggested comes from keeping knowledge rather than a page.
- pH 6–7.5
- Hardness 2–12 dGH
- Diet algae grazer
- Tank length 120 cm minimum
Care notes written from general aquarium knowledge, not from the cited sources.
About
Flying foxes are the fish people buy by mistake. They sit in shop tanks beside Siamese algae eaters under similar labels, they look alike at a glance, and they behave completely differently once they mature.
Look at the fins and at the band above the stripe. A flying fox carries a gold or bronze line above the black one, its dorsal and anal fins are coloured with a clear white edge, and it has two pairs of barbels. A Siamese algae eater has plain fins and no gold band. Ignore the old advice about where the black stripe stops — it carries onto the tail in both, so it separates nothing.
The practical difference is temperament. Flying foxes become territorial with age, chasing other bottom-dwellers and anything shaped like themselves, and they never develop the appetite for black beard algae that makes the other fish worth having.
Tank setup
Keep one flying fox. Two in an ordinary tank means one persistently harassing the other, and it doesn't settle down over time.
Give them a long tank with plenty of broken-up floor. Rocks, wood and planting divide the territory a mature fish will try to claim.
Provide caves and overhangs. They'll pick a spot and defend it, and having somewhere defensible makes them less inclined to patrol the whole tank.
Give them moderate flow and plenty of oxygen. They come from flowing Southeast Asian rivers.
Cover the tank — they jump.
Feeding
Flying foxes are omnivores that graze algae when young and lose much of that habit as they mature.
Feed a varied diet: sinking pellets, algae wafers, blanched vegetables, and frozen or live food for protein. They're not fussy.
Keep vegetable content in the mix. A fish fed entirely on protein is more territorial and less interested in grazing anything.
Avoid: buying one to control algae. They eat soft green algae as juveniles and little else, and never touch black beard.
Filtration and flow
Moderate flow and plenty of oxygen suit them. They don't cope with dirty water, so keep it clean.
Ordinary filtration is otherwise fine — they're hardy and adaptable.
Keep nitrate low with regular changes. They're bottom fish and they live in the layer where waste settles.
With plants
Flying foxes are safe with plants and won't damage healthy growth.
They'll graze algae off leaves, which is useful as far as it goes.
Dense planting is worth having for a different reason: it breaks up the territory and gives other bottom-dwellers somewhere to be when the flying fox decides it owns the floor.
Health
They're hardy, long-lived and rarely ill.
Watch the other fish rather than this one. A flying fox coming into maturity in a tank with corys or loaches will make their lives difficult, and the first sign is usually a bottom-dweller that has stopped coming out.
Jumping is the other risk. Keep the lid on.
Breeding
They're not bred in home aquaria and there's no established method.
Commercial stock comes from farms using hormone induction, as with most of the Southeast Asian cyprinids in this catalogue.
The wild trigger is monsoonal and involves changes across a whole river system, which is not something a tank reproduces. There is nothing useful to attempt here.
Tank mates
Avoid8
- Common Pleco Common Pleco grows to 45 cm against Flying Fox at 16 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Common Goldfish Flying Fox is not safe with Common Goldfish: common goldfish and flying fox are a bad pairing.
- Demasoni Cichlid Flying Fox is not safe with Demasoni Cichlid: african cichlids and flying fox are a bad pairing.
- Discus Flying Fox is not safe with Discus: discus and flying fox are a bad pairing.
- Electric Yellow Lab Flying Fox is not safe with Electric Yellow Lab: african cichlids and flying fox are a bad pairing.
Only with care31
- Kribensis Flying Fox is aggressive and Kribensis is peaceful.
- Least Killifish Flying Fox is aggressive and Least Killifish is peaceful.
- Panda Garra Flying Fox is aggressive and Panda Garra is peaceful.
- Scarlet Badis Flying Fox is aggressive and Scarlet Badis is peaceful.
- Amano Shrimp Flying Fox is a risk to Amano Shrimp: flying fox and shrimp and yabbies are a pairing to watch.
No conflict is recorded with the other 66 species in the database, so nothing to flag. 3 species are not covered at all, so they could not be judged either way.