Scarlet Badis Care, Breeding & Tankmates

Scarlet badis are also called scarlet gem or gem badis, and they make a perfect addition to an aquascaped nano tank. They’re tiny, active, and pack a colorful punch – but don’t let that fool you, these guys can be tricky to keep for a few reasons.

The first – and biggest – reason is they don’t take well to frozen foods longterm – nevermind prepared foods like pellets – so you’ll need live food. Another tricky part is that males are super territorial and get into some pretty intense fights with each other. Adding to that, females are hard to come by, so you’ll have some issues with aggression you’ll need to know how to mitigate.

And finally, their tank needs to be set up carefully and thoughtfully with some light – but pretty frequent – water changes (the live food doesn’t help, either.)

But if you’re interested in keeping these nano fish, they’re super rewarding and you definitely won’t be disappointed if you put in the work!

Disclosure: we’re reader-supported! So if you buy a product I recommend, I might make some coffee money at no cost to you.

Table of contents

Distribution & Natural Habitat

Populations appear to be extremely fragmented and restricted to tributary systems in parts of West Bengal and Assam states, India, the Western Ghats, and possibly Bhutan. This is one of the few times we have a video to throw here versus a picture if you want to get some real-life underwater inspiration.

Typically lives in, clear water streams, river, and occasionally round waterfalls with sand or fine gravel, and dense plant growth. Some noted plant species include Limnophila, Hygrophila, Vallisneria, Ottelia, and Rotala. They don’t usually live in water deeper than 27″ (70cm,) but typically no shallower than 11″ (30cm.)

However, it’s worth noting that this description is a neotype locality. And, since we’re still missing a ton of info, might not encompass all their habitats.

Aquarium Care

I don’t know if I’ll be able to say this enough from now until the end… but water quality is the biggest issue with these guys. Food can be a struggle, sure. Aggression also, yeah. But water quality is the thing that will typically takes these guys down. It’s important to make sure your tank is properly cycled, well-planted, and well seasoned before adding Dario dario to it.

Tank Specs

For a pair or one male with a few females, a 5-gallon works fine. Even a 2.5-gallon works fine for a pair or one male. However, if you find yourself in the unfortunately common situation of dozens of males and no females, a 10-gallon is best because they’re highly territorial with one another.

Even more territorial if there is a female in there to display for and fight over.

However, I wouldn’t put them in anything much larger than a 10-gallon, unless you have a ton of them. 20-long is the max I’d suggest even if you do have a ton. In larger tanks, they may have a hard time finding food without you polluting the tank. Additionally, these guys don’t do great in deeper water.

On the bright side, you likely won’t need a heater if your house is reasonably warm, and you probably won’t need a lid since they don’t seem to be big jumpers. Still, if you have them, I’d suggest both just to be safe.

However, I would be more concerned about cooking these guys than being too cold, so I would suggest an external controller to keep things from overheating.

Stocking

This is where things get a bit variable-laden and your experience needs to come in. Males, obviously, display their best colors if they have both a female to display for and males to compete with, so to have the most action and interesting colors, you’ll want both. But you’ll want to have the tank setup correctly where males can form their own spaces, which are usually small 6″ x 6″ patches of plants.

If you can’t find enough females – which is very likely – and you end up with all males, you’ll want enough males to spread the aggression out so no one gets too stressed. Two males with no females will likely just battle it out, even five males may be too few if there’s no females.

Somewhere in the range of 8+ males with no (or very few) females will likely disperse aggression well enough. But how aggressive these guys can be depends entirely on how much breeding space (IE: plants) are available.

Decor

Think clear water and jungle-y. Plenty of plants everywhere from floating to substrate are great, branches help break up territories and sight lines, and rocks would help too. If you can see to the back of the tank you you have more than two males, it’s likely not dense enough.

If you don’t want floating plants, vallisneria is helpful for blocking out the light once it grows tall enough.

Of course, with all these plants you’re probably going to want a good planted substrate and some decent liquid fertilizers. Or if you opt for gravel or sand (HTH pool filter sand is my favorite), you’ll probably want some root tabs and liquid fertilizers. In either case, I have the best substrates and fertilizers below if you don’t know where to start.

Best Plants For Scarlet Badis

There aren’t any bad plants for dario dario, aside from maybe a full-blown carpet with no other plants. They prefer a densely planted tank that looks more like a jumbled up jungle than a nicely aquascaped tank. Since scarlet badis stake out breeding grounds based on plants, you’ll want some well-placed plants in there to reduce male aggression if you have more than one.

On a related note, they usually deposit the eggs on the underside of broad-leaf plants, so you’ll want to include some of those if you intend to breed them. If you’re going biotope, they’re found with Limnophila, Hygrophila, Vallisneria, Ottelia, and Rotala species, which I included below as well as similar functioning replacements.

Dwarf Aquarium Lily (Nymphaea stellata)

Pennywort sp.

Sweet Potato

Bacopa sp.

Vallisneria

Anubias (Anubias barteri)

Java Moss

Water Wisteria

Vallisneria

Cabomba sp.

Guppy Grass

Lemon Bacopa (Bacopa Carolinia)

Broad Leaf Amazon Sword (Echinodorus bleheri)

Anubias (Anubias barteri)

Lighting & Filtration

They prefer subdued lighting, but they need a ton of plant cover – go figure. So you’ll likely want to either let your plants blot out their light or grab and ajustible plant light – the best are listed below. Filtration is another interesting one. They typically come from higher flow areas but prefer slower water movement.

The easiest way around this is with air stones and a sponge filter. You can keep the turnover rate and dissolved oxygen high without turning your tank into a washing machine. If you need recommendations for the best air pump or sponge filter those are below as well.

Water Care

Since they come from high-flow environments, these guys don’t tolerate bad water quality. That includes low oxygen levels as well as ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. But since they need tons of plants, this is a thin balance between prisitine water quality and plants that are doing well, so your water change schedule depends entirely on your setup.

However, for the sake of giving an answer, I’d say somewhere in the range of 10% twice a week to keep things clean and stable. With these guys, smaller and more frequent water changes is definitely better. Particularly if you’re hoping to get the best color out of your group.

Additionally, you’ll obviously need dechlorinator for your water and salt might help some, but isn’t needed with these guys. You’ll probably want to grab some meds too, just in case. I listed the ones you’ll most likely need below so you can be prepared.

Feeding Scarlet Badis

Scarlet badis do best with live food – but tubifex and bloodworms (live, frozen, freeze-dried or otherwise) tend to gives these guys more problems than they’re worth, so you should feed those very sparingly or not at all. They do, however, do well with microworms, banana worms, vinegar eels, walter worms, grindal worms, daphnia, baby brine shrimp, or anything else you’d typically feed to fry.

They will routinely go after prey much larger than themselves though, so be careful because they can choke.

You can get these guys on frozen foods, they don’t do super well on them. Additionally, they rarely take to prepared foods successfully and you’ll usually see that they slowly crash on you. And since they’re so small and always hunting, they’re prone to obesity, so be mindful of their weight and don’t be afraid to skip a few feedings a week.

Common Scarlet Badis Diseases

Scarlet badis are seriously prone to things like ammonia burn and nitrite/nitrate poisoning. They also need a good deal of oxygen and can’t cope well with stress. But thankfully, they aren’t being overbred right now so they have relatively few issues when it comes to diseases. Of course, they can get any freshwater disease, but none of them pop up with any serious frequency. There are a few that do seem to pop up the most though.

Bloat

One thing that seems to pop up for these guys again and again and – like I already mentioned – is the black spots.

Depending on the condition of the fish, this could be normal coloration or ammonia burn. Typically, ammonia burn starts out reddish and then develops into a darker brown/black color. But since Dario dario are already red, it’s hard to spot until it’s advanced, so keep a close eye on water quality!

12 Best Scarlet Badis Tank Mates

I love me a mini community tank and, while these guys do best alone, they’re not the worst tiny tankmates. Be careful to avoid fish that are overly active or fish that’ll be spooked by a bit of aggression in the tank. Shrimp are a fine addition to their tank, but be aware that scarlet badis will predate on shrimplets, so if that’s what you want, start with a good colony and then add dario dario, not the other way around.

And the final consideration is; be aware of how low your fish can go temperature-wise. Scarlet badis prefer relatively cooler water, so you’ll want to look at fish you can keep comfortably around room temp. You can keep these with CPDs and Elassoma species as well since their care is almost identical, but they would compete heavily for the same territories so it’s not ideal.

Bonus: if you plan on breeding your scarlet badis, you can still keep them with tankmates that won’t predate on the eggs. Cherry shrimp, pygmy cories, and otos will all leave the eggs and the fry alone. Though I can’t say this show of good faith is returned on the part of Dario dario – even for their own fry.

Pygmy Corydoras (Corydoras Pygmaeus)

Green Rasboras (Microdevario kubotai)

Breeding Scarlet Badis

Getting scarlet badis to breed is as easy as having a male and a female in most cases. However, getting a female is really tough. And, in most cases, what looks like a female is likely a subdominant male trying to go unnoticed by aggressive males.

Males tend to be bright red and slightly larger. When they’re in breeding mode they get a blue tint to them and have a black and white edge on their ventral fins as well. But the only way to know 100% is to see them spawn.

Spawning

Scarlet badis spawning is similar to most anabantoid species. The female is usually the one that initates spawning, in her weird way. When she approaches a male’s territory, the male will vie for her attention and attempt to bring her to his proposed spawn site.

To an inexperienced breeder, the male’s overzealous “coaxing” looks like some seriously erratic darting and chasing behavior. If the female is receptive, she’ll follow him to wherever he’s selected to spawn. She might swim away and play hard to get or swim away because she doesn’t like his spot.

If it’s the latter, she’ll usually lead him to a spot that she likes and they’ll spawn there – because the male really doesn’t care where he spawns – as long as it’s in his territory. If it’s not his territory, he’ll still attempt it, but the male that holds the territory will usually come in to spawn.

Once she decides she likes the spot – because it’s not about the male to her – she’ll allow him to embrace her. This usually starts with a few “dummy” embraces that don’t produce any eggs. The first few are usually clumsy and awkward looking.

There are mixed reports about where the eggs go, some just scatter them in the substrate while others place them on the underside leaves. It’s typically the female that chooses where they go after she’s laid them but, the male will guard the eggs until they hatch and the female will leave to go about her fishy business.

Egg & Fry Care

Spawning is super quick – usually only a few minutes – but anywhere from 5 to 100+ eggs can be deposited. Depending on the temperature, they’ll likely hatch with 48 – 72 hours. If you have a densely planted tank there’s a chance some might survive to adulthood, but likely not many. If you want to maximize the number of fry you get, I would remove the eggs as soon as you see them.

Once they’ve hatched, they’ll take 2 – 3 days to use up their yolk sak before they’re free-swimming. There isn’t a ton of information about if the male protects the wigglers, but it seems likely. Once they’re free-swimming, however, most will likely be eaten if they’re left in there.

They can be fed infusoria and paramecium as a first food, so plants/leaf litter/other organic material is super helpful for the first few days. After they’ve grown a bit, they can be fed walter worms, and within a few weeks they can be placed with the adults and fed the same food as them.

Types Of Badis

There’s two types of fish that car commonly called “badis.” The first is Dario species like our Dario dario friend above, the second is Badis species. Both belong in the Badidae family, which was previously placed under the anabantiforme order, but now is floating around with conflicting ideas and opinions on where they actually belong.

At any rate, Badis and Dario are closely related, in either case, both are typically called chameleon fish because they’re spectacular at changing colors, which makes them tough to ID. And not every fish has a common name, but where there was one, I put it down.

Further Reading & Resources