Great points all, not disagreeing with you John or Tiger but this sort of goes back to what Milingu is saying, if I understand correctly.
Decreased aggression in captive bred fish.
- Thread starter Cherrybomb
- Start date
What exactly does it mean to breed it out? Do two calm people make calm babies? Environment, tank mates and tank size are huge factors along with the personality of the fish. My Oscar hates being crowded but is tolerant with space. He's neither vicious nor peaceful. BUT once he has a 'war' with a fish nothing will make him stop and it wouldn't matter if he were in a 50 or 500 gallon tank. One of my male hrps is wicked aggressive and was a nuisance in the largest tank. Now he's temporarily in a much smaller holding tank with his half grown fry (50) and is peaceful and calm, so go figure. Too many factors to slap a simple explanation out there.
Yes, you can artificially line breed any trait, but for ornamental fish, no breeder select for behavior, only look.
I find myself wondering, if possible, a person could breed a dovii or Asian red tail cat to be the most beautiful strain but nowhere near as aggressive would there be such a desire for them.
It's likely that two calm people statistically have a better chance of producing calm babies than two extremely hyperactive individuals...not only through genetics but also by influencing the environment in which the children are reared.
And I agree that tank size, number/type of tank mates and other environmental factors that are not often considered...such as illumination, water flow, and likely a host of others...will also have a huge influence. Brick sounds to me like a typical Oscar; he's the big guy on the block, he knows it, and he utilizes it to his advantage. But I think that it's totally unrealistic to state that he would develop a grudge against another fish with which he shares a small tank and then carry that forward if those two were moved into a 500 gallon or larger aquarium. In my experience, many or most "aggressive" fish become total pussycats if moved into larger...read "appropriately-sized"...accommodations. Same thing with water flow; a couple of wavemakers or powerheads do wonders toward calming down bullies. In Nature vs. Nurture, there's no doubt that nurture has serious influence...
...but, with fish at least...nature must win out. In the end, and individual variation notwithstanding, an Oscar is still an Oscar...and is only, at most, a "medium-level" bully or brawler. There may likely be exceptions, but speaking in a broad sense and with fish of equal or similar size...a supposedly "aggressive" Oscar will be quickly dismantled into its component parts by one of the other aggressive fish mentioned above, if placed together into a typically too-small aquarium. When it comes to the upper-tier tough guys like the Buttikoferi, even size hardly matters. They grow, they reach a certain size, they snap...and the next morning half of their tankmates, both larger and smaller, are dead.
It seems to me that all three of us, and others besides, are saying virtually the same thing.
I know a guy who had problems with a salvini in a 150g and he moved all of them to a 300 gallon tank, even then he still had problems. Silver dollars, Jack Dempsey and even the big Oscar was getting beat up so he rehomed it.
My 4.5 inch male Con used to have my O backing down. Oscars are gentle giants imo, kind of remind me of whale sharks, just “gliding” around ignoring everyone lol
I’ve seen a Buttikoferi go after a 14 inch male Red Terror and the Butti was only 7 inches. Only other fish I’ve seen that doesn’t care about the size of the fish (excluding parents protecting eggs/fry) would be Convicts, must be the stripes that give them superpowers
Perfect example of another truly aggressive fish...one to whom a 300-gallon tank is still too small to play nice with others.
300 gallons...500 gallons...these sound like big tanks, and compared to the little 20-gallon kits that many people start out with, they are. But look at the fish living in the wild. There is literally no example on earth of a large number of aggressive fish living so tightly packed that they can never get more than a few feet away from one another. Observe fish while snorkeling, or even from a canoe. Each fish covers an area of many, many times the footprint of even the largest aquarium, simply engaging in finding food. A tough guy takes a swipe at another fish...and that fish just swims away. There might be a pursuit that lasts a short distance, maybe a few feet...but that few feet is already longer than almost any aquarium in existence.
We're never going to see truly natural behaviour, in anything other than the smallest fish species, if we plan on mixing a large number of species and individuals in a home aquarium. For those smirking when they read this, as they gaze at their "large" aquariums and think "that doesn't apply to me!"...yeah, sorry, but it does.
Salvini is an old timer, along with Oscar and JD, but it has not mellow down with longevity of domestication. The closest relative of Salvini is Trimac, parent of hybrid Flowerhorn bred for color and aggressiveness. In comparison, Oscar is a gentile giant. JD is more aggressive as young adult, but mellow down with old age.
Where did you get trimacs being the closest relative of salvini from?
If you're going off the old look based thing, here is an adult male salvini courtesy of Dan at COTA:
