BULLY FISH

I will say one thing about the fish book(s) as well as advice from the fish stores... don't always believe what you read or hear about compatibility. Fish are just like humans and have personalities too. You will have your "BULLY" fish, your "SHY" fish, your "LAZY" fish, your "PLAYFUL" fish... well, you get the idea. A book may say a certain fish is a great fish for a community tank. You will bring it home thinking "Wow, this will be a great addition to my community tank." just to find out that this is one mean bully fish.

A good example of this is Gourami's. Everything you read (I have 4 books on tropical fish) on them says they are excellent for a community tank. WRONG! I have 6 of them. 3 are Kissing Gourami's. 2 of them chase the other one all the time and are extremely mean. One of them chases every other fish in the tank. I finally got so frustrated with Curley, that I moved him and Moe together in one tank... thinking that they would not chase each other. WRONG! Then Curley chased Moe all over. After a few weeks of this, I decided to move Curley into my Cichlid tank. I figured, "What the heck, if he dies he dies." (Now remember all books and pet store people tell you that you can't put community fish in a Cichlid tank because the Cichlids will kill them.) He is still in there, months later, and doing just fine and dandy. They don't bother him and he doesn't bother them. Moe is in another tank with other various tropical fish and he leaves every one alone and is doing great. Larry is very happy in my 80 gallon tank with a bunch of small fish like Cory's, catfish, and Do-Jo's.

I have 3 other Gourami's, one, Sunny, is a Golden Gourami; Dawn is a Giant Gourami and Heather is a Blue Gourami. Sunny and Dawn chase everyone and everything as well. Heather is very meek and mild mannered and shy. She used to hide all the time until I split these guys up as well. My best advice to you on Gourami's would be NOT to get them in pairs and you should be all right.

Since joining the Aqua-Link fish help service I have received many letters from people who have Gourami's and have found the same thing to be true with them. It seems that they are all quite aggressive... of course, this is just a blanket statement on my part. I obviously have not heard from those that have no problems with theirs.

Another example would be Goldfish. They are not aggressive at all or supposed to not be. Of the 18 Goldfish I have, I have 2 real bullies. They seem to go through phases when they start acting up and decide to pick on the others. Pearl (7") is the worst. She really gets going sometimes. I give her a time out when she gets too bad. I take her out of the big tank and put her in the feeder Goldfish tank. Pearl is a common Goldfish. The other is Patty (5 1/2"). She also gets timeouts. They do not like to be put in a small tank where they can not move around freely. This tends to calm them right down.

Then you have the other side of the coin. Books say certain Cichlids, Oscars, Green Terrors, etc can not be housed together because they are too aggressive. My 150 gallon tank is living proof that it can be done. I have 3 (sometimes 4) Oscars in there. 2 are 9 1/2 inches, 1 is 8 1/2 inches. One of them seems to get himself in trouble every so often. I don't know why. He must anger the others for some reason because they will start picking on him. He ends up with torn fins, tail, skin as well. Since I have so many tanks, I have the luxury of moving him to a safe tank for a while and let him heal. One thing I have noticed in the Oscars is that they seem to get more aggressive when I don't feed a whole lot of food. I think when they feel hungry it makes them grouchy and thus they beat up on the smallest one, though he really isn't small. He is about 7 1/2", but he is smaller than the others. Make sure that you feed them enough food to keep them content if you plan on mixing other types of fish with them.

The other fish are: 5+" Pike, 6 1/2" Texas Green Spot, 8 1/2" Green Terror, 4" Firemouth, 5" Striped Botia, Kissing Gourami, and a large 13" Plecostomus. The books say the Green Terror's live up to their name, but I find the Hornet is actually very meek. In the beginning I really thought she would not make it, but she has thrived very well. The Cichlid tank has kind of become my tank where I stick fish that can't get along with anything else. It seems that if you put smaller aggressive fish in a tank with the other Cichlids they learn who is boss and don't mess with the bigger Cichlids, but yet at the same time perhaps, a fish that ordinarily would get killed by the bigger Cichlids don't mess with the bully fish.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

There is one thing that you might try. It does not always work on all tropical fish, but it does seem to work very well with male Bettas that are housed with other tropical fish. Hang a mirror on the side of the tank that the Betta tends to hang out in. He will attack his own reflection in the mirror and leave the other fish alone. This has worked on some other tropical fish, but seems to be VERY affective with male Bettas.

Here is another thing that you might try which has worked for others. This will work if you place a new fish into an already existing tank and the original fish start to attack the new fish. Try rearranging all the plants and decorations in the tank. Often times fish, like Oscars, are very territorial. They want their space and they don't want other fish to invade it. By rearranging the contents of the tank you may be able to trick the agressive fish into thinking that they are in a new tank. The bully fish will then spend a while looking for a new territory to stake out. By the time he finds his new space the new fish will hopefully be forgotten.

CAUSES AND PREVENTION

Some things can add to or be a reason why a fish that is not supposed to be aggressive will get aggressive. It is very important to not let the fish get hungry. A hungry fish can become very aggressive when under ordinary circumstances, the same fish would not be aggressive at all.

For Cichlids it is important to feed a variety of foods to them. This will help keep them from being so aggressive. Feeding live food to Cichlids exclusively can lead to problems in the future. My fish know that when a Goldfish is put in the tank, it is food. Thus when they are hungry, naturally their first thought is to eat another fish. It doesn't matter that the other fish in the tank are big, they will still go after it. For this reason, I only feed feeder Goldfish once in a great while. That way the Oscars don't get into a habit of chasing and attacking other fish.

          

You are visitor number
FastCounter by bCentral
to swim by since 10.46pm January 31, 2000.