In my videos, and my photos you'll notice JDs in nature are constantly surrounded by live bearers, and if the live bearers suddenly startle or disappear, so do the JDs, into large caves below.
They are constantly under pressure from fish eating birds, so that flight mechanism has worked well for them instinctively
I've also noticed that a single pair, will guard an area of at least 250 gallons, and that most people put them in much smaller tanks, which I also consider a mistake.
A friend of mine who has been able to keep them in a slightly smaller tank ( a 130 gal, I believe), keeps a group of 1 male and 5 females where the decor is a large rock pile in the center of the tank. His group is always out in the open, and not at all skittish.
They are constantly under pressure from fish eating birds, so that flight mechanism has worked well for them instinctively
I've also noticed that a single pair, will guard an area of at least 250 gallons, and that most people put them in much smaller tanks, which I also consider a mistake.
A friend of mine who has been able to keep them in a slightly smaller tank ( a 130 gal, I believe), keeps a group of 1 male and 5 females where the decor is a large rock pile in the center of the tank. His group is always out in the open, and not at all skittish.
