Fully aquatic animals in a tank with fish...?

Hey,

So my roommate is moving to Singapore and leaving behind his fish tank. It's a 20 gallon freshwater tank with maybe 6 little fish in it. I am looking into options of how to spice it up with things other than just fish...

A fully aquatic salamander interests me...But, I want to respect the fish that are already in there and I don't want to do anything that would jeopardize their well being. Is there a newt/salamander that could be added to the tank that is fully aquatic and isn't territorial and mean and gigantic? and if so, what kind? and where could I get one?

Or, what else, other than fish, do you feel might add a bit of spice to my tank -- are there fresh water frogs? snails? crabs? would crabs be dangerous to the fish? .....etc.

Please, your advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Aquatic salamanders don't do well with fish. Either the fish will attack the salamander or the salamander will atack the fish. You should try to avoid mixing different animals together. Putting salamanders with fish in a tank is like putting dogs in a cage with cats. You should try buying another kind of fish that will mix in good with the previous ones.

A sticky was created recently to respond to this almost weekly question. Use of the forums search function will show even more information on this topic.

http://www.caudata.org/forum/showthread.php?t=62143

randumgrrrl said:

Or, what else, other than fish, do you feel might add a bit of spice to my tank -- are there fresh water frogs? snails? crabs? would crabs be dangerous to the fish? .....etc.

Click to expand...

Well, crabs can be dangerous to fish and some require specialized habitats. They are best left out of fish tanks as well as newt tanks. Snails are generally find besides a few problems like them overpopulating and harboring diseases.

There are water frogs like African dwarf frogs (Hymenochirus), African clawed frogs (Xenopus and Silurana) and Pipa sps. Clawed frogs generally prefer cooler temperatures and are voracious predators while the dwarf frogs are poor predators and generally starve with more aggressive fish. Pipa are also voracious and large and have specialized care requirements. So most aquatic frogs are bad choices.

But there are many, many interesting fish you can keep with your former roommate's fish.