Got Some Red Fin Compressiceps- Awesome Fish But Stupid

[Lufbramatt]

Popped into my LFS on friday, saw they had a tank full of gorgeous sub-adult Red Fin alto. compressiceps. Been looking for some nice comps for ages- loads of places near me have calvus but prefer the look of comps. Thought about it overnight and wen back on saturday to collect them. Picked out two (the most orange colouired ones ) One of them claimed the middle of the boggest rock pile straight away and set about standing his ground the the two julies that had previously resided there. He'd only been in the tank 2 hours and had already decided he was the dominant fish. So cool seeing him do the " look at the sky and pretend I'm not being attacked" thing when he strayed into the territory of the dominant male brevis. the brevis soon got the message that this guy was not to be messed with. Glad that comps are so placid!

In the meantime, the other comp had staked out the back of the other rock pile and set about digging a huge hole at the bottom of the rocks to form a cave . Didn't realise they were diggers but cool to see all the same.

The drama came last night when the first comp decided it wanted to eat one of the tetra wafers i stick in there at night for the syno. lucipinnis catfish. They're about 5mm accross- just small enough to fit in the huge mouth of the comps but too big for it to swallow. This was at 10.45pm . . . sat and watched it to see if it would spit it out- didn't seem that it could, and it was getting a bit stressed out. Came to the conclusion by midnight that I was going to have to catch it and give it a hand with some tweezers, which I didn't want to do as I know comps can have fragile jaws Anyway, catching a fish with huge eyes in a tank full of rocks wasn't going to happen so ended up pulling a ton of rocks out of the tank and eventually got him in the net. Thankfully the wriggling to get out of the net dislodged the wafer and I didn't have to pull it out. Got to bed at 1am

Looks like the synos will be getting fed something different from now on . . .

 

[Lufbramatt]

Turns out the more timid comp has come out to play but no-one likes him, especially the other comp. He has been sent up to the top corner of the tank by the other comp and one of the brevis males.

they seem ok with the lights off, the bullying gets much worse with the lights on, so they've been living in the dark for the last 2 days but obviously can't keep them like that for ever. I think I'm going to have to return one of them, but not sure what one. I like the gutsy comp as he has better colouring (at the moment) but fear he might have mental fish syndrome, which will probably get worse as he grows. So will probbaly take the more timid one back, but not sure? any ideas?