Ornate overly aggressive?

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C

captkrill

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Feb 10, 2009
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Tyler, TX
Recently picked up an 5" ornate and put it in the grow out tank of predatory fish; 4" albino senegal, 8" senegal, 10" Silver Aro and 12" ropefish. Other fish in this tank includes a 4" Dia Discus, ad a 6" black knife.

Everything seemed to be fine to 2 days until the morning of the 3rd I wake up to my black knife floating and ripped to shreds.

The albino and senegal never messed with the black knife. So the only conclusion I can come up with is the ornate did it. So my question is, are they pretty aggressive to begin with or was this just a freak out?
 
here's my conclusion. your BGK might have died because of something else and then when it died the bichirs devoured him. polys are not known to be that aggressive.
 
people say they tend to be a more aggressive bichir than other species, mine was kind of a big baby unless someone encroched on his cave. If he's killing fish and he was the last one intrduced to the tank, I would say the agression will only get worse.
 
Ornates are only aggressive to other Ornates from my understanding, but they can also be aggressive towards other Polys as well. Mine is the biggest one of the bunch and he gets along with everyone. As for your BGK...it's hard to say. I wouldn't be surprised if the Silver had anything to do with it as well.
 
My silver gets picked on by the discus. Hes a big baby.

The black knife never showed any particular irregularities in the days preceding his demise. Didn't swim weird, never was floating or always swimming downward like something was wrong with the swim bladder. Was eating normally, actually it gorged himself on the aro sticks...was kinda weird seeing the BK eating the aro food that the aro wasn't touching.
 
For what it's worth: my ornate (16"+) ate three fairly large african clawed frogs. when I introduced a delhezi my ornate would clamp on to his tail and ride him around the tank, although this stopped after a week or two. Long story short, these guys do seem to have some potential for aggression. Good luck.
 
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