Murderous Angel Fish!!

[aloaring]

Has anyone ever heard of this happening- We have two large Angel fish, living in a 30 gallon community setup. We have seen them arguing with each other on a regular basis but have been told thats because we only have two of them. They never do any real harm to each so we haven't worried about it.
But recently we found our male black molly dead on the plactic cover. We recently bought an African Butterfly fish called Keith, so we blamed him. How wrong we were, one night the lights were out in the tank and all seemed peaceful, one of the angel fish, called Tinfoil was in the front corner of the tank looking up. An innocent molly was just swimming around near the surface...when Tinfoil swam at full speed towards the molly and hit him head on!! Poor molly jumped hit the lid of the tank and fell back in dead!! We've not got any new mollies for that tank and Keith seems to hold his own so we haven't removed him. Anyone ever heard of angelfish having a vendetta agianst mollies ? Thought it was really strange as he is fine with all the other fish!

 

[Vip]

Sounds like your angels have spawned to me, do a good check of the tank for eggs or fry.

 

[aloaring]

I have looked and nothing unfortuneately and i would have thought he would be attacking everything in the tank if that was the case but its just mollies he doesn't like and the other Angel fish. Should i get another angelfish to try and calm him down or would it make matters worse?

 

[Oddball]

Angels are a chichlid, and like chichlids and synodontis they have their own personalities which can lead to aggression as well as friendliness. It may be that tinfoil is overly aggressive or simply dosent like mollies erm sorry this isnt that much help, or a last thought is that although they have not spawned yet they may be getting ready too................

Good luck

 

[Myfishdied]

Angels are cichlids so expect that

 

[fcelestin]

Angels have a personality of their own. I have 5 angels at the moment with very different personalities. I had one very large male angelfish who unfortunately died that was very aggressive - nearly killed another large male angelfish - towards all the other male angels, indifferent to other females except his female to whom he would be submissive to! Whereas I have others who were his tankmates, they would spawn in the community tank with little fanfare.

 

[Cali]

Angels eat small fish in the wild. I'm not familiar with Mollies, but aren't they fairly small?

...ANY small fish is potential food for even the friendliest of angelfish, IMO.