Good points, I was thinking the same thing and when I wrote tfh they pretty much said the same thing. Also that some people's view of aggressive behavior may have changed a bit. BTW we're talking about a 4' aquarium, the same one my mom has had since ~87.
Decreased aggression in captive bred fish.
- Thread starter Cherrybomb
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Good idea, I'm still waiting on
Good idea, I'm still waiting on that short body redtail cat.
back in the 80s-90s fishkeeping and water changes were not the same as they are now. Too many or too much water changes was taboo. Having more polluted water can make a fish more aggressive. It was okay keeping an oscar in a 35-40g tank with 55g tank being the optimal size... Lots of husbandry issues due to lack of knowledge flowing outside of the LFS or clubs.
Just lost a polar blue to bloat, after getting dominated by a smaller krib. . .now if I could get a nice HRP w/o delivery fees. . .
Any characteristic, including aggression level, can likely be magnified or reduced by carefully controlled breeding that targets that particular characteristic. But generally speaking, we do the exact opposite regarding aggression. The standard tactic for breeding most cichlids is to buy a small group and raise them up together; once they pair up, the losers in the find-a-mate sweepstakes get rehomed and we wind up producing spawns from the biggest, baddest, meanest, most aggressive, most assertive pair of fish in that original group. If you are trying to breed out aggression...this is the wrong way to do it!
Aggression vs. predation is simply a matter of semantics. A 12-inch fish eats a 3-inch fish, and his keeper says that it is aggressive for doing so. While that fish might indeed be aggressive, the fact that he has an appetite and eats food is not evidence in support of that description. Google "hungry".
And finally...as in all things...everything is relative. Back in the day Oscars and Dempseys and Green Terrors were considered aggressive fish; that was mainly because most keepers had never seen a truly aggressive fish. I absolutely do not believe that an Oscar today is any different from a behavioural standpoint than one from 50 years ago...but try to keep that "aggressive" Oscar with a Buttikoferi or Managuense or almost any large CA and you will have your eyes opened to a harsh new reality.
Exactly, the main guy that I talk to, my mom's friend, said that the Oscars back then would hold their own with managuenses, no problem. Maybe they're just getting harder to find.
I agree with you, I think most people confuse “aggressive” with “predatory”
I see 99% of those youtubers call RTC, Oscars, Peacock Bass etc aggressive. The truth is they’re not. They’re just very predatory fish. Kinda irks me that they don’t know the difference. Everyone in this tread gave great responses. It absolutely depends on tank size. A dovii would go on a killing spree in anything less than 300g, but say in a 500-600 it could live with other fish. Just take a look at GuapoteMel. He’s what I aspire to have one day.
As for that last statement I agree. I wouldn’t have dared to put my female Butti with my Oscar or even my jag pair. They’re nowhere near as aggressive as she was
That's pretty much the opposite of what I said.
I am comparing Oscars and Dempseys today with Oscars and Dempseys I kept 40-45 years ago. I don't think they are any different in their levels of aggression, neither less nor more. But many other species of fish have become common in the hobby since then that are much, much more aggressive and by comparison, they might make it seem as though Oscars (just for an example) have gotten "kinder and gentler"...but they have not. They were simply never bad-asses to begin with.
I agree. What used to be considered aggressive Oscar, Jack Dempsey and Green Terror in the old time because there were few truly aggressive fish around to compare with. Try to house the old timers with some newer CA or Africans today, and they become wimp and get bullied.
That said, some wild caught fish, such as green terror and angel, are more aggressive than captive bred fish, while others, such as Betta and Mbuna, grow larger, stronger, and more agressive than wild caught fish. There is no consistent trend of comparative aggressiveness when comparing wild caught to captive bred fish.
You cannot raise kinder and gentler fish from captive bred, but you can turn CB predatory fish to non predatory if you never feed them life food. I have raised JD, Malawi eye biter and GT that wouldn’t eat guppies as they were fed with pellets all their life.
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You can. Just select less aggressive specimens for breeding or create circumstances that favor this specimens.
As I mentioned in another thread the f9 and f10 M. beani from the DCG conservation project are significantly more peacefull than wildcaughts, f1 ord f2.
I asked the breeder how he explains this and he assumes that the too aggressive specimens die from stress in a quite early stages while beeing raised in a big group of juvenile fish in the limited space of an aquarium. Also fish that only defend a smaller breeding territory breed more succefull in the presence of other fish in this limited space. For comparison In nature beani will only breed succesfully whe a pair can controll a few hundred meters of river.
It also works the other way round. You can make captive fish more aggressive. For example the most captive bread Copadichromis borleyi red fin are more aggressive than wild caught specimens because the breeders often select the most colourfull male out of a group for breeding. In a group of same sized fish the most aggressive is normaly the most colourfull specimen. In the lake the most aggressive growing up male has to compete with full grown dominant males and will not be able to succeed or will lose so much energy that he will fall back in growth and in the long term will be outcompeted.
