reverse dither fish??? who's the dither...

Magnum Man

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this from my last post in the bitterling thread...

so, I added another resident to the bitterling tank, a male long fin rosy barb, I was busy trying to insure the Tiger Teddies went into their tank, and doing water changes, and I came back a half hour later, and witnessed something , I still don't understand... it looked like a classic West Side Story, dance rumble in the back corner, as far from view and through the roots... up and down, and round and round the 10 fish were whirling... I thought the bitterlings were gang killing the just slightly larger rosy barb, they weren't in an area of the tank I could do anything about it, so my plan was to remove the dead rosy, when I finished my water changes... when I came back, later, the largest bitterling, and the rosy were swimming around together ( not chasing ) and neither fish had so much as a visible nip on their fins... at this point, it was almost like they were excited to see each other swimming around in an excited frenzy??? thoughts???

my thought is maybe the bitterlings aren't used to being the big fish in their environment, and as such, they often hid... now a non threatening slightly larger fish, is in their tank, and they seem to be more freely swimming around the tank, and not hiding as much??? it was strange to witness, I wish I had more time to watch their introduction....

thoughts on what I witnessed???
 
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so that was yesterday...

this morning the rosy, and largest bitterling pair up and swim a lap every now and then... all the rest of the bitterling are not hiding, and much more visible in the tank... sounds like a case, that the dither doesn't have such a bad life...
 
When you first got the bitterlings I commented that they reminded me of my favorite genus of barbs, Pethia. Rosy Barbs are a species in Pethia. I suspect the physical similarity, despite the man-made long fins, is triggering the behavior.
 

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