Kung-fu Angelfish!

[Crossfc]

I've had my tank over 4 months now and my angelfish have been battling for the pecking order in the tank from day 1. One angelfish has claimed the title of top fish. I all him 'Dai Lo'. I wondered how he/she did it as he/she is not anybit larger than the other two condenders. So I watched intently when my angelfish would decide to flex their muscles at each other. The Dai Lo seemed to have learned some side-step, loop around technique to win all his/her fights. None of the other fish have picked up on the technique. They'd dart at him/her and only to have their attack dodged and counter-attacked. So now they leave him/her alone. The top fish spot is secure.

But the battle for 2nd place is always in contention. Again the two fish fighting for 2nd spot is the same size as the Dai Lo. Not only do they swim and peck at each other they do face offs. They flare at each other and those two whiskers on their bellies go rigid, like getting in to some kung-fu fighting stance. One fish has adopted the technique of flaring and tilting himself sideways. So when he attacks, he comes in sideways at a seemingly faster speed than you'd get staying upright. However the other fish I think is taking lessons from Dai Lo. He is learning just to loop around any attacks during a face off and often seems to team up with Dai Lo to put down the side-ways attacking fish.

Any stories of your fish fighting for tank supremacy?

 

[avirex]

good story
ya my 2 male dwarf gouramis go at it all the time..

 

[Tolak]

It's typical pairing behavior, either get a divider or a second tank. The two that are teaming up are pairing off, if you put them in a 20 or 29, do plenty of water changes & feed them well you should have a spawn real soon.

If you leave them in the 30 without a divider, they will spawn, and probably single out one of the remaining 4 as their main target of aggression. Once they start with that, they will pick off the remaining angels, one by one.

A pair of angels with 4 unpaired fish usually will work in a 55 or better, a 30 is too small. A divider will work for a while, until you get a pair out of the other 4.

A divided 30 will work for 2 pairs, if those are the only fish in there. You are looking at either a bigger tank, or rehoming some fish in the future.

 

[Crossfc]

It's typical pairing behavior, either get a divider or a second tank. The two that are teaming up are pairing off, if you put them in a 20 or 29, do plenty of water changes & feed them well you should have a spawn real soon.

If you leave them in the 30 without a divider, they will spawn, and probably single out one of the remaining 4 as their main target of aggression. Once they start with that, they will pick off the remaining angels, one by one.

A pair of angels with 4 unpaired fish usually will work in a 55 or better, a 30 is too small. A divider will work for a while, until you get a pair out of the other 4.

A divided 30 will work for 2 pairs, if those are the only fish in there. You are looking at either a bigger tank, or rehoming some fish in the future.

Thanks for the info Tolak but I know that my tank is too small if the fish keep growing and of the pairing problem. But this thread isn't about that. It is about mortal kombat in your aquarium!

 

[bunjiweb]

I moved what I thought was my nice peacful red-tail black shark from my 50G into my old 60G with a large syno, BGK, Pim. Pictus etc... He went beserk and started trying to fight all of the fish that were bigger than him, particularly the BGK. After about 3 days of this I decided that I was getting no where so I moved him back into the 50G where he has been peacful ever since...

Ben

 

[Tolak]

It's typical pairing behavior, either get a divider or a second tank. The two that are teaming up are pairing off, if you put them in a 20 or 29, do plenty of water changes & feed them well you should have a spawn real soon.

If you leave them in the 30 without a divider, they will spawn, and probably single out one of the remaining 4 as their main target of aggression. Once they start with that, they will pick off the remaining angels, one by one.

A pair of angels with 4 unpaired fish usually will work in a 55 or better, a 30 is too small. A divider will work for a while, until you get a pair out of the other 4.

A divided 30 will work for 2 pairs, if those are the only fish in there. You are looking at either a bigger tank, or rehoming some fish in the future.

Thanks for the info Tolak but I know that my tank is too small if the fish keep growing and of the pairing problem. But this thread isn't about that. It is about mortal kombat in your aquarium!

Ummm, I try to seperate them before it gets to the "mortal kombat" part. That's a good way to lessen the amount of angels but not the method I prefer. If you are late by a couple of hours in seperating the combatants, injury or death will occur.

Ok, enough warning, you seem to know what you've gotten into. I have a 65 with 2 pairs & 3 other unpaired fish, 7 angels total. It took quite a bit of switching to find compatable fish. From my experiences, blacks are some of the nastiest angels when pairing. Some time ago the pair of blacks in the 65 singled out another black, and double teamed him while I was at work. This poor fish had 2/3 of it's fins missing, along with both eyes swollen out worse than I've ever seen on a battered angel. I figured he was a goner, but put him in a 20 for meds & some healing anyway. Took about a month for the eyes to get back to normal, nearly 3 months for the fins to grow back in. After that he went into a 55 with some larger angels.

Within a week he paired with another large black & spawned. That pair went into a 20, they are better looking fish than the pair in the 65, and produce better spawns. I guess he figured it's payback for getting his butt kicked, gets his own tank now with a healthy female.

My first pair, a couple of silvers, came out of that 65, it's a fertility tank or something. The male tried to beat on everything in the tank, especially a silver superveil. Before it got too bad I pulled the pair & put them in a 29. The male is on his second female, he has to have a background on 3 sides of the tank, he rams the side of the glass trying to get at fish in tanks nearby. He has that angle move down, he's the fastest angel I've ever seen, Like a fighter jet in the 65, going from fish to fish.

 

[Dorkhedeos]

dai lo? call him doe wong or haa instead anyways, as long as they arent always fighting, i guess its fine to put them together

 

[CFC]

I have an old pike Cichlid that was given to me by a lfs who coukdnt house it that thinks it is the terminator, no matter what body part it ends up losing it still carrys on being an aggressive b@*tard.

When i first came into possession of this fish it relentlessly picked fights with my jardini arowana which was a good 3" larger than the pike, one day the jardini grabbed the pike by the tail and done several laps of the tank with the back half of the pike in its mouth before spitting it out. The pikes tail was split right past the caudal pendical and into the flesh and has never healed. The arowana is now 20" plus and the pike no longer trys to pick fights with a fish that could cut it in half.

The next fish to come under fire from the pike was a very large siamese tiger fish. STF dont like to fight and dont have the mouth structure for battle so the STF speant its days swimming from hiding place to hiding place trying to avoid the pike, that is until the pike cornered the STF one day so the STF neatly removed one of the pikes eyes with one bite!
They now live in seperate tanks to avoid further injury to either fish.

Still not having learnt its lessen the pike recently started to pick fights with a 9" golden dorado i'd just added, but dorado are fast, mean and have the jaw structure to tear other fish into pieces so the pike was soon wearing the battle scars where the dorado had quite simply taken lumps out of the pikes face each time the pike went up to try and get a lip hold on the dorado. Does the pike care? No, it still thinks it owns the tank and gives chase to any fish that comes near