"Don't Try This At Home, Kids" - Bizarre Pairings

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Serpentine

Piranha
MFK Member
May 17, 2018
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I had some extra African jewel cichlids from a very prolific pair and tossed a few of the unfortunate little guys into the red devil's tank as snacks. He quickly deactivated all but one. I'll be a purple kangaroo if Nero didn't decide to keep her as his girlfriend. She is 2 inches to his 11 and not even a remotely related species. She seems unaware that she is supposed to be a food item and sleeps tucked almost underneath him. I guess... whatever floats their boat? There goes my wet pet. He wants nothing to do with me now that he has his little jewel cichlid. I'm calling her Jezebel.

Then we have an unusually hardcore juvenile Jack Dempsey who got kicked out of every tank I put her in. For a while she terrorized both our festae pair and the jewels... no kidding. She was awful, earning herself the name Leona Helmsley. Faced with nowhere else to put her, I plopped her into Caligula the red Texas cichlid's tank. That was a somewhat less risky proposition because he has proven himself to be a good mate before. But still... a 4 inch Jack Dempsey with delusions of grandeur? Sure enough he began courtship dancing and digging a nest. Leona was nervous about his foot-long bulk and huge, toothy grin. Her fears were not unreasonable. Caligula has a habit of tearing fish he doesn't like (and that's most of them) in half. She hid for 3 days until she was convinced that he wasn't going to kill her. He actually brought her a few of his food pellets, eating some himself and then spitting what was left at the entrance to her cave. Room service! Her sides turned breeding dress black and she came out to join him. They sit and scowl at me together.

There are other people on here who have weird--inadvisable under normal circumstances--pairs. How did yours come about?
 
My strangest pair so far was a foot long ornate bichir with a 4 inch blue botia loach. I suppose it’s because I never feed live food but the loach would share a piece of driftwood with the ornate all the time. Looking at the two, the loach DEFINITELY was able to fit in the ornate’s mouth, but he never tried.
 
My strangest pair so far was a foot long ornate bichir with a 4 inch blue botia loach. I suppose it’s because I never feed live food but the loach would share a piece of driftwood with the ornate all the time. Looking at the two, the loach DEFINITELY was able to fit in the ornate’s mouth, but he never tried.
My ornate lives under a big peice of driftwood with an Asian bumblebee and a 3 inch Raphael... get along great!
 
I had an Angel and a polleni who were buddies. The angel was getting picked on in another tank and I had no where else to put him. So I put him in with the lone polleni and kept a close eye on them. They got along great lol.
 
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This guy, I tell ya.

Nero the red devil and his jewel cichlid lady friend. She lives inside one of his toys. He pushes the toy around the tank so that she goes where he goes. She comes out to eat, exercise and sleep. The rest of the time she seems pretty happy hanging out in the ball and being ferried from place to place. Occasionally Nero shakes her out of the ball just to be a jackass but he hasn't harmed a single scale on her.

 
My giant red tail gourami is the unwitting boyfriend of my female synspilum. She follows him everywhere and almost killed her much larger (same species lol) mate when she bonded with him
 
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