'Killer Fish' Question

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Kivstev

Kivstev

Candiru
MFK Member
Jun 19, 2009
255
6
48
Massachusetts, USA
I've had a few aggressive fish such as Salvini, GT, etc. and they never seriously hurt any other fish even as adults. Now I have some potential 'killers' in my 150G community - a young Carpintis and a Midas.

My question is that when 'killer' fish finally kill, are they any precursors? Any real out of the ordinary aggressiveness before deaths occur?

I've heard over and over that 'My Red Devil just went crazy over night and killed all my fish'. Is this really true? Do these fish just one day go schizoid and kill without being extremely aggro in the previous day/weeks?

I plan on moving the Carpintis and Midas to separate tanks eventually anyway, but am curious if fish really just become murderous lunatics overnight w/o warning?
 
yup, devils and midas when they go... buddy they go even on there own mates, there not community fish as far as im concerned, granted if you have smaller devils/midas and your otherts are larger may buy you some time, but it can happen, so long as there is a female in there... its on like donkey kong
 
I mean you can basically watch your fish and see that it is going to start , its may start off small and sooner or later they can flip, but tex are like that too so i dunno you might be alright but my exp says that they dont play well with others, or even themselves for an extended period of time, my male red devil had a 12 inch pike cichlids as a room mate for a day and i removed the pike for fear of it being beaten like a red headed step child, lol
good luck
 
IMO the danger with cichlids is this - they want to be KINGS in their own mind. So they will not always kill everything unless they can 'win the war" so to speak. for instance.... you can put 30 or so red devils in a 55 gallon tank to grow them out, and most likley if they are all the same size you will have no problems.... now as those fish grow and you remove growouts... as soon as one fish thinks it has the physical strength and stamina to beat up all the other fish, it will go totally aggro on everybody. This is why you can basically keep either one cichlid or a large group of cichlids but you will have problems with anything in between.

What do you have with your cichlids? another thing is that a cichlid will not (unless it thinks it is an alpha potentially) attack fish way outside of their trophic level... for example catfish, plecos, schooling fish if they are small enough... it will either look on small fish as prey (unless they are cichlids) or if they are scavengers they will most likley let them be (with some exceptions e.g. real agressive king fish)

Another case is with small and large fish. A large cichlid will generally not kill a small cichlid until it gets almost the same size. You have to get in a cichlids mind with thought like this.... it will attack if it feels a threat to 1. its food supply, or 2. its social standing.

So we may need more info about your fish. What kind of tank do you have what other fish etc maybe a pic. and we can probably -predict what is going to happen with your cichlids : )
 
Some can be totally random. i used to keep a few small terms or some feeders with my tilapia. he wouldn't even look at them for months but randomly he would kill every last thing in there in a matter of hours
 
i think some of it has to do with the particular fishes' personality,tank size,sex and maturity.it seems when they get to 5 inches and over,the hormones kick in
 
Like most have written, it can happen seemingly overnight. Even folks who stare at their fish everyday sometimes report things as fine one day, scales everywhere the next. Carpintis probably wouldn't be as bad as Midas, but with aggro cichlids it's often just a matter of time.
 
My midas was yawning, biting the glass, and moving the biggest rock he could find in the tank before he killed my gt, clownknife, and oscar. It started about a week before the massacre. Wish I would've listened to him and gotten everybody out:(

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