Identify the Flowerhorn

[H]-[H]

Wow, how do you keep so many fish in a tank? No aggression?

 

[cichlid fiend]

Wow, how do you keep so many fish in a tank? No aggression?

IDK the size of his tank but its called the over stocked effect. When U over stock you can pull off having alot of aggressive fish living together.

Example: I had ten pikes living together for almost a year. Once I did some moving around and was left with 4. The fighting got very serious and I was quickly down to 3.

I think it works cause no one fish can feel like this is my house!!!

 

[Stibnite]

Wow, how do you keep so many fish in a tank? No aggression?

Well, it's a 300g.

The trick is putting a lot of hiding spaces in the tank (I put 3 per cave-dwelling fish), but making sure they are all no higher than 1/3 the depth of the tank.

That way, the top 2/3 of the tank are open for the free swimming species.

The cave dwellers will take a small area for themselves, and guard it by flaring gills and returning to their position. The free swimmers just stay away from caves and swim around the open areas.

The next step is adding oddball fish which confuse the well known aggressive cichlids. If there is a variety of species in the tank, some mean cichlids will calm down due to their presence distracting them.

You need a giant "distraction fish" for cichlids to take their anger out on, which is why I use the Pacu (I use a Giant Gourami in another setup). None of the fish can hurt the Pacu, and he rarely fights back, so he works perfect.

This causes what I've named as a "dominance triangle." Dominance triangles tame the aggressors of the tank.

For example, my Black Belt and Texas hate each other, but they will always default to pushing away the Pacu first because he's the largest fish (largest threat in their minds). So, they will push him away, and just face off with a gill-flare, then head back to their respective corners--never hurting each other because they were able to "agree" momentarily that the Pacu was the greater threat to them both.

The tank is also slightly crowded with open water fish, just for the simple fact that it forces those free swimmers to be incapable of claiming territories outside of the edges of the tanks.

Now, keep in mind, these fish were also raised together for the most part, which highly increases the odds that they'll be less aggressive toward one another.

Temperature is another factor, and I keep temperature between 77-79 degrees. Once it reaches 80+, the fish start getting more aggressive. Another thing, is I have never once fed this tank anything that even remotely resembled a "feeder" fish of any kind. Their foods have all been either pellet form or frozen prepared foods.

A minor contributor is a slightly higher Ph. Most SA cichlids are kept in lower Ph water, but doing so makes them much more territorial in my experience. When I raised the Ph to stay between 7.4-7.8, aggression was slightly reduced.

I think the greatest impact is feeding the aquarium their frozen foods directly from my hand. When I give them frozen foods, I hold it in my hand and plunge my entire hand into the water. When I start opening my fingers, all of the fish start diving into my palm to get the food. Taming the fish to yourself also assists in making them tame and tolerable toward each other.

Lastly, this is what I've dubbed as my male show-tank, however, I've placed some females inside to keep some certain males at bay in small territorial zones with their respective female partners.

With all of that said, none of this is an "exact" science, but if you want to pull it off, using the above methods helps to minimize aquarium aggression. Everyone's experience will be unique and takes a great deal of trial and error to pull off just right.

I am fortunate to own 15 aquariums, so if something does go wrong, I can alter arrangements without much hassle.

One thing which has baffled me for awhile, though, is how the tank works in unison if I "attempt" to add something new. I have tried a few times, but doing so has proven futile for any species which hasn't grown up in the tank. I tried adding an extremely aggressive 13" Leporinus I have into the tank, and every bloody thing there tried to attack him--even the catfishes and plecos. I had to remove him quickly.

I'm sure it won't work for everyone, but I like uniqueness, and try to pull off things not normally attempted in the hobby. Just how I am.

 

[Stibnite]

"Especially with his personality and seemingly excessive wisdom in comparison to his other tankmates."
^this made me lol.
looks like a nicer old school zz red dragon. and i loved your story, by the way.

Thanks.

I should probably clarify what that means, really.

The Flowerhorn is picky toward humans, for starters. People can walk by all day and he just minds his own, but when he sees me, he'll run from corner to corner of the tank following me around.

He's very playful, and wants me to touch him when my hand goes into the tank. He rubs his fat head against my palm like a bull--it's so funny. Sometimes he even gill flares at other fish, and dances around as though he's protecting my hand from them.

He also doesn't see eye to eye with the Black Belt, as they've fought their entire lives--so what he did was made friends with the Pacu. He then uses the Pacu to his advantage as a shield. He'll hide behind the Pacu and wait for the Black Belt to come after him, then when the Black Belt gets distracted at the Pacu, the Flowerhorn jumps out of nowhere and lands his attack, runs back to position, and gill flares. He's a wuss when it comes to actual fighting, but he's so much smarter than the other fish, he is able to make up for his sissiness with wit.

Most fish are just fish in an aquarium, but every now and then you get one of those rare ones which show amazing signs of personality and awareness of their outer-tank surroundings.

It's hard not to get overly attached to the ones which are capable of such character.