when good fish act bad...

[Magnum Man]

so I've seen this before in my long time in the hobby... admittedly usually with cichlids, and in those cases, most often the fish is just grumpy all the time, but I just watched the biggest silver dollar in my group go psychotic... a typically peaceful female, that normally is content to hover above a large piece of driftwood center tank... the group right now consists of 2 common, and 3 tigers, with one male, 2 adult females, and 2 unsexed, that are about half grown, she was totally not tolerant of any fish in her line of sight... the male was like "I'm outa here" and took position in the tank as far away from her as possible... the other adult female and the juvinals, were flying all over the tank... it lasted about 10 minutes, and things started settling down... the male ( also a common ), and that big female usually hang together... he's not tight against the glass, right now, but watching her, like he's trying to assess her mood...

this made me think about ptsd... this fish has not had an easy life, previously being in with the bichir, and getting transferred in, with the dominant yellow acara... normally a peaceful schooling fish, until she exploded... now 10 minutes after she appears normal... the other adult female hanging pretty close to her, the others still giving her more space...

the littlest fish in the group just swam over, with no violent outburst, so things must be getting back to normal...

fish ptsd??? anyone witness anything similar??? maybe a start to symptoms like from a brain bacteria or parasite???

 

[Magnum Man]

almost back to normal, except the male is still on the far left side of the tank, maybe the outburst started as a spat between the male and the female???

 

[Magnum Man]

one of the little tigers feeding now, looking for a freshly exposed root to munch on, after the outburst

 

[Magnum Man]

at this point, maybe 20 minutes after her outburst, the male swam over to her spot, he may have even touched her, ( that close ) without any issues, then swam back to where he was on the left side of the tank... maybe she did't throw a frying pan at him, but still giving him the cold shoulder???

 

[GaryE]

I've seen non-Cichid fish get really owly like that before. Invariably, it has been a shoaling fish not kept in a shoal. I even had a zebra danio decide it was going to kill everything. I was a kid at the time, and my aquarium mentor told me to get more of them. I had 2 from that species. Since way back them they cost 11 cents each, so I got a bunch and voila, peace in the valley.

You have tigers and commons - different species, not different varieties. Maybe it doesn't allow more social expression, and things get a little twisted sometimes.

 

[Back in the fold]

It sounds like what house cats do occasionally . They just get a wild hair up their butt and start tearing around like crazy . Maybe they’re relieving some pent up frustrations or boredom .

 

[Magnum Man]

the hatchet fish get the "zoomies", and the silver dollars will freak out if I'm too in their face, doing tank maintenance... but this occasion was directed at tank mates, not the big ugly guy outside the box...