Each species has an often well deserved reputation for certain characteristics, but there are always statistical outliers. I've had a few very odd ones.
My male festae is a weenie. The female picks on him and has even outpaced him in growth, probably because she grabs most of the food. He saunters around in yellow and scarlet until she decides to put him in his place, when he turns submissive brown and slinks away. The funny thing is that it's not just her. He gets punked by jewel cichlids. Even the Pictus catfish chase him out of their coconut shells.
On the other side if the coin I had an electric blue Acara--a very laid-back species--who butchered everything in the tank with him. He was nuts.
I had an angelfish who shacked up with (not kidding) a pearl gourami in a community tank. The gourami simply drove off his mate and took her place. This was particularly surprising because they are not from the same family or even the same continent. They can't breed together. They have different communication styles. He really hated her touching him with her feelers and she probably wondered why he didn't touch her back with his pelvic fins, which at least superficially resembled feelers. Nonetheless she helped him guard the eggs he'd had with the female angelfish, also very much out of character for her species. As far as I know female gouramis eat eggs rather than guarding them. It seemed to be a case of, "Well, these are obviously important to him so they are now important to me."
And now (not cichlid related at all) I have a red tail shark who seriously thinks that she is a clown loach rather than a solitary, territorial minnow. She joins them in their loach piles and has even adopted some of their behaviors like lying on her side and playing dead.
Who else has specimens that proudly march to the beat of their very own drums?
My male festae is a weenie. The female picks on him and has even outpaced him in growth, probably because she grabs most of the food. He saunters around in yellow and scarlet until she decides to put him in his place, when he turns submissive brown and slinks away. The funny thing is that it's not just her. He gets punked by jewel cichlids. Even the Pictus catfish chase him out of their coconut shells.
On the other side if the coin I had an electric blue Acara--a very laid-back species--who butchered everything in the tank with him. He was nuts.
I had an angelfish who shacked up with (not kidding) a pearl gourami in a community tank. The gourami simply drove off his mate and took her place. This was particularly surprising because they are not from the same family or even the same continent. They can't breed together. They have different communication styles. He really hated her touching him with her feelers and she probably wondered why he didn't touch her back with his pelvic fins, which at least superficially resembled feelers. Nonetheless she helped him guard the eggs he'd had with the female angelfish, also very much out of character for her species. As far as I know female gouramis eat eggs rather than guarding them. It seemed to be a case of, "Well, these are obviously important to him so they are now important to me."
And now (not cichlid related at all) I have a red tail shark who seriously thinks that she is a clown loach rather than a solitary, territorial minnow. She joins them in their loach piles and has even adopted some of their behaviors like lying on her side and playing dead.
Who else has specimens that proudly march to the beat of their very own drums?
