endli aggression

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LeoKhomutov

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Sep 22, 2008
73
0
6
illinois
Well my endli woes don't seem to be over just yet. I recently lost one of my 12" endlis to gravel ingestion... a painful lesson learned. So I bit the bullet and washed and chaged out about 200 lbs of sand for the "killer gravel". Now, one of my two remaining endlis has started bitting the other one quite aggressivley. I see him bite the other guy's tail and yank on it or any other fin that he can grab. I'm seeing frayed fins and bloody markings on those frayed fins. I really hope I don't lose another endli. I'm looking for suggestions on how to deal with this. Perhaps I can move my aggressor to another tank for a while to let him cool off and give the other guy a "home court" advantage when they reunite. Please help, I don't want to bury two $70 fish in one month:(.
 
My tank size is 225 gal. It certainly has plenty of room for these two guys but the aggressor keeps looking for his buddy to pick on. Anyways, last night I took out the offender and put him in my 75 gal community tank. I just hope he doesn't decide to go after my my small barbs, corey and mollies. I'll let him cool down in the smaller tank a couple of weeks until the other endli heals up and beefs up, then I'll reunite them in the "monster" tank.
 
Has the aggressor bothered any of your other fish? I have an ornate in my planted community tank with angels, gourami and a green asian aro and all is well so far. I wouldn't like to try to catch him with all the plants and driftwood in the tank!
 
Well it looks like the the endli that was bitten up is slowly coming around. He ate alittle today and is coming out of hiding a bit. The aggressor endli seems to be getting comfy with his smaller tank mates... not eating them. So far so good.
 
I never even thought about it much but when I started feeding my endlis Hikari Carnivore sinking pellets I realized that the food was the same shape and size and color as my gravel. The poly would pick up the food and gravel together then spit out the gravel. Retrospectively it was just a matter of time before some gravel went down the throat as well. Well the one endli stopped eating for about a month and then I found it dead one evening. I did an autopsy to confirm my suspicion and found gravel toward the back of the digestive tract. Hard lesson learned. I posted a few threads durring that ordeal under "endli acting unusual" title if you want to follow the story. My suggestion obviously is if you have gravel, chage it to sand.
 
I have gravel in mine but I feed small pieces of shrimp to the ornate as there is also an aro in the tank with him (my fish eat a lot of shrimp). I think I'll risk the gravel (especially since it's a planted tank). It's good to know the risks, thanks for the info.
 
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