55g native tank... bunch of new pics

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Chicxulub

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Aug 29, 2009
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Nicely colored longear sunfish

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Large channel cat

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Big, fat blue cat

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LMB

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SMB. He keeps his colors bland to avoid angering the LMB. If the LMB is in his cave, this guy is a fairly colorful little bronzeback.

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Sunny, alpha male sunfish and resident *******.

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Sunny again.

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Rock bass

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Preggers. I don't know for sure she's pregnant, but I strongly suspect she is.

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She has great colors!

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Only decent shot I was able to get of the smaller channel cat.

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Blue and Preggers, the fatties lol

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My plec, the only non-native in here. I tried having various suckers and whatnot to help with clean up, but as you could expect they don't last the night...



Hope you all enjoy! :)
 
Beautiful fish! Gotta love longears!
 
Very nice collection.

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Thanks for the comments everyone!

The LMB killed four SMB before he accepted this one. One of the ones he killed was actually bigger than he was!

The key to success for me was adding a bunch of dither fish in the form of my sunnies. He absolutely hated them at first, but after a couple of weeks and a bunch of dead sunnies, he figured out that he couldn't beat them all up all the time and he kind of gave up on his territoriality. He still dominates the other fish, but he no longer tries to kill them 24/7 like he used to, and he even seems to have something of a friendship with the alpha male sunfish (it's the only one other than the cats that's allowed to share his cave). As for this SMB, he treats it just like the sunnies; he ignores it the vast majority of the time but when he's feeling cranky, he goes after anybody that comes in the right hand side of the tank, regardless of what they are. Well, except the blue cat. He's figured out that the blue cat does NOT put up with his shenanigans. He bit it once and big Blue whipped around, latched onto his tail, shredded it and proceeded to chase him around the tank for about ten minutes. Now he gives all the cats a very wide berth! The blue cat has an amazingly different temperament than a channel cat...
 
Thanks for the comments everyone!

The LMB killed four SMB before he accepted this one. One of the ones he killed was actually bigger than he was!

The key to success for me was adding a bunch of dither fish in the form of my sunnies. He absolutely hated them at first, but after a couple of weeks and a bunch of dead sunnies, he figured out that he couldn't beat them all up all the time and he kind of gave up on his territoriality. He still dominates the other fish, but he no longer tries to kill them 24/7 like he used to, and he even seems to have something of a friendship with the alpha male sunfish (it's the only one other than the cats that's allowed to share his cave). As for this SMB, he treats it just like the sunnies; he ignores it the vast majority of the time but when he's feeling cranky, he goes after anybody that comes in the right hand side of the tank, regardless of what they are. Well, except the blue cat. He's figured out that the blue cat does NOT put up with his shenanigans. He bit it once and big Blue whipped around, latched onto his tail, shredded it and proceeded to chase him around the tank for about ten minutes. Now he gives all the cats a very wide berth! The blue cat has an amazingly different temperament than a channel cat...

so if I put a few sunfish in with a lmb it will basically neutralize the largemouth's agression?
 
With mine it did, but each fish is an individual. I would keep a large stock of sunnies until the bass pretty much gives up with active aggression. When mine stopped trying to kill the sunnies and was content to just run them out of his territory, I tried adding the SMB. At first, he really singled out the SMB, but it only lasted a day or two. Now the LMB stays on the right side and the SMB stays on the left side of the tank. At feeding time they both come out and they're so worried about eating that they don't mess with each other.

ps: your font is really hard to read...
 
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