Unhappy Angel Fish

[Mr.Tan]

I just purchased a single angel fish yesterday for my 30 U.S gallon planted aquarium. After i bought the fish, i did the proper acclimation process and put it in the tank. It seems very "lonely" and made me think I should have bought two of them. should I go back and buy another? or now that I placed this one in my tank yesterday am I going to be out of luck and they will fight?... the one in now just hangs out and doesnt' seem happy. I know none of the fish bother it, all I have are two swords (male and female) and 5 black skirt tetras (along with cory cats but they're always on the bottom of the tank). No one picks on it/nips fins or any of that they just leave it alone....


can I add another one successfully? or is 1 too much for my tank.

 

[fluttermoth]

You can't jutt add random angels to a tank and expect them to be friends, I'm afraid.

You can really only keep angels as mated pairs, shoals of 6+ or single specimens. I would watch the skirt tetras; very nippy fish, IME, even if kept in a shoal.

 

[Mr.Tan]

yeah after doing some reading I came to that conclusion...it seems as though you need to have a group and when the divide off into a pair then thats the ones to keep. Unfortunatly when i was at my LFS none of them were sticking together.


i guess i'll just keep the one then. I'll also keep an eye on the skirt tetras, although they have never bothered anything before.

 

[onidrase]

Try to study the behavior of a fish before determining if it's happy or not. Not all fish spend all their time actively swimming about the tank "happily". Angels are ambush predatorys, they tend to hide amongst plants and such and wait for food to come by. My angel spends all his time behind a piece of driftwood he's claimed as his own. Everything that goes near it gets mercilessly attacked til it swims off. He's not a very social creature. Even shoals of angelfish are prone to injuring each other.

 

[Mr.Tan]

Try to study the behavior of a fish before determining if it's happy or not. Not all fish spend all their time actively swimming about the tank "happily". Angels are ambush predatorys, they tend to hide amongst plants and such and wait for food to come by. My angel spends all his time behind a piece of driftwood he's claimed as his own. Everything that goes near it gets mercilessly attacked til it swims off. He's not a very social creature. Even shoals of angelfish are prone to injuring each other.

yeah i probably just need to watch its behaviors more.. I did notice it seems to have claimed a piece of driftwood that sticks up. It will hang out behind it, but when I fed the tank it can swimming out and was eating food. Doesnt seem real social yet, hopefully soon it will swim more its such a beautiful fish.