New Juvenile Jack Dempsey
- Thread starter Condor1944
- Start date
if that was toward me I have a male and female in a 55, all they do is hide, only time I can see them is if it's completely dark in my room and the tank lights off, I see dark fish shaped movements. That's it.
Leaving the danios in the tank should help to bring the JDs out of their shell.
In nature JDs are surrounded by large shoals of live bearers, JDs and many other cichlids can gauge the threat of danger by watching the shoals that tend to swim aimlessly near the surface.
I have watched JDs try to eat the smaller fish and miss in about 98% of the attempts in nature, but because aquariums are small compared to nature, the live bearers are more easily caught in the confined space, so replacing dither fish periodically would be the norm.
That said JDs seldom stray from cover. click on pic to run video
In nature JDs are surrounded by large shoals of live bearers, JDs and many other cichlids can gauge the threat of danger by watching the shoals that tend to swim aimlessly near the surface.
I have watched JDs try to eat the smaller fish and miss in about 98% of the attempts in nature, but because aquariums are small compared to nature, the live bearers are more easily caught in the confined space, so replacing dither fish periodically would be the norm.
That said JDs seldom stray from cover. click on pic to run video
Don't know your setup, but even a little overhead cover at or near the surface of the water makes a huge difference, which is why I lean toward floating plants of some sort. It still has to be big enough for them to hide under. Get rid of the bottom cubby holes and watch the difference. No dark phase stressed out patterns and no real place to hide... just new comfort zones that'll take 'em a couple of days at most to get used to.
Standard Australian rainbows make good dither too.
I even have 6 dwarf neon rainbows that I keep with my electric blue male and his Wild female in their 40B tank when they're not guarding eggs or fry. After I take the fry or juveniles out, I return the rainbows, Haven't lost one yet! But he grew up with tons of dithers. Neons, danios, corys, angels (well they fought with him twice), marble hatchets, and some sunset dwarf gouramis.
He never ate or attacked any of them except the 2 bouts with the angels (lost round one... won round two) and now he doesn't even bother them.Just a dempsey attitude thing, I guess.. prove to them its his tank! Stay out of my way thing, and thats it. Never scuffled since.
ShadowP I can't agree enough with that statement, floating anubias has definitely done wonders for my fish in the past
