What Is This Fish

[jj_Sykes]

Hi

I was just wondering if some one can help me in identifying a fish (please see attached). It was bought under the impression it was a community fish but over the past month - Fish have started vanishing or showing up with bite marks or in some cases missing an eye

Neons have been almost whiped out, a blue ram and three tigerbarbs have fallen prey to something.

I did a water test and all seems fine with the water

Thanks

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

Steatocranus tinanti, aka Slender Lionhead Cichlid... Pretty fiesty African dwarf cichlid, albeit the males reach ~15cm. I have 3 Lionhead (S. casuarius) and a pygmy Lionhead (S. bleheri) in my Rio240 and there are regular territorial bullying battles, since bringing them indoors from a 5x2x2 over the winter.

I'd expect a single specimen to give your Blue Ram a lot of grief if the tank is not at least 4-foot long with plenty of caves, but a bit surprised if it is attacking the Neon Tetras and Tiger Barbs when not protecting fry...


My best guess right now, without knowing the temperature of your water and your total number of fish, I'd suspect that you have too few Tiger Barbs and they are doing typical nippy/boisterous behaviour around tankmates, as there are not enough barbs to keep the nipping "in house."There are obvious nipping damage marks on the tinanti's dorsal fin too, but this could be down to conspecific aggression in the fish store tank ("mum" Lionhead still has a badly scarred dorsal fin from getting a horrible wife-beating from "dad" over a year ago, when he wanted to spawn again while she was still looking after a brood of 13 that made it to adulthood).

 

[jj_Sykes]

Steatocranus tinanti, aka Slender Lionhead Cichlid... Pretty fiesty African dwarf cichlid, albeit the males reach ~15cm. I have 3 Lionhead (S. casuarius) and a pygmy Lionhead (S. bleheri) in my Rio240 and there are regular territorial bullying battles, since bringing them indoors from a 5x2x2 over the winter.

I'd expect a single specimen to give your Blue Ram a lot of grief, but a bit surprised if it is attacking the Neon Tetras when not protecting fry.

Hi thanks for such a quick reply

I cannot see what else can be attacking them and causing such problems (you can watch it chasing other fish about).

There is a single albino tiger barb but that keeps to himself after its buddies were killed, It appears to have been going through the bleeding hearts too The only other "odd" breed is below, again there is three of those and it keeps themselves to themselves

 

[moochy13]

thats a synodontis of some type, maybe a petricola if memory serves. not a very big syno, and i doubt the cause of your problems. in my experience, synos dont bother anything other than other synos, and my only experience of that is from my 8 inch beefy featherfin dominating a smaller syno hybrid.

 

[jj_Sykes]

My best guess right now, without knowing the temperature of your water and your total number of fish, I'd suspect that you have too few Tiger Barbs and they are doing typical nippy/boisterous behaviour around tankmates, as there are not enough barbs to keep the nipping "in house."There are obvious nipping damage marks on the tinanti's dorsal fin too, but this could be down to conspecific aggression in the fish store tank ("mum" Lionhead still has a badly scarred dorsal fin from getting a horrible wife-beating from "dad" over a year ago, when he wanted to spawn again while she was still looking after a brood of 13 that made it to adulthood).

There is a single tiger barb (there was more but they got picked apart) but even with the light off and watching - that seems to keep itself to itself. The lionhead is the only one you can see actually chaising other fish

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

Was the Slender Lionhead put in the tank before the other fish that are being attacked, or was it the final addition?

Have you seen it attack the three Synodontis catfish (looks like either petricola, luccipinnis or a hybrid... but I'm awful at identifying these brown Synos with blacks spots!)?

What size is the tank?

 

[jj_Sykes]

Was the Slender Lionhead put in the tank before the other fish that are being attacked, or was it the final addition?

Have you seen it attack the three Synodontis catfish (looks like either petricola, luccipinnis or a hybrid... but I'm awful at identifying these brown Synos with blacks spots!)?

What size is the tank?

its quite aabout 5 ft in length so decent size in length, 40 fish (10 rummy nose, 10 harelquins 5 bolivian rams 3 rams, 3 synos, 1 lion and the rest tiny tetras)

it was the final addition to the tank

edith and a bristle nose and albino tiger barb and 1 male indian gurammi (sp)