Pictus aggression

[rumblesushi]

In your experience how aggressive are pictus cats?

I didn't think they were meant to be, but my 5 inch pictus is very aggressive.

It's beaten up various fish, it even used to start trouble with my old jardini.

It used to give constant beatings to a 6 inch raphael which is now seperated. It's chased and bitten a few bichirs.

It also gives beatings to a very aggressive jack dempsey of the same size. This JD bullies everything else, but gets hammered by the pictus.

Has anyone else known a pictus to be that aggressive?

 

[Miles]

Pictus can be nasty when they want to be, especially at larger sizes.

This bad boy below me here was a Pim I inherited, not quite sure the exact species. Anyways, This was the only catfish I have ever seen defend territory like a Cichlid..

It was also the only Catfish I have ever seen lock jaws and fight mouth to mouth with a cichlid.. Which was a 12" red devil, and the Pictus kicked its ass.

Could be an isolated incident, but I ended up having to give him away to somebody with some monster clown knifes, oscars, and silver dollars.. Then after that he ended back up at the LFS because he was chasing all the other tankmates.

 

[Miles]

Oh yeah and he was only about 7-8".

 

[rumblesushi]

Interesting Miles, it actually sounds similar to my fish.

Has nobody identified this pim?

I'm pretty sure mine is a standard pictus, unfortunately I have no pics.

Mine defends territory like that. I have a single piece of bogwood in the middle of the tank which is a cave in itself, with legs.

The pictus owns this cave, and chases everyone out, but for some reason tolerates a large clarias which is not aggressive.

He is also clever, the JD tries to liplock it and the pictus just runs circles around him and bites his side tail and side.

He's a cool fish too, he waggles against the glass like a tig.

 

[rumblesushi]

I guess noone else has an aggressive pictus?

 

[PufferXtreme]

Maybe it's because they are lone fish and not being kept with others of their own type?

 

[gomezladdams]

I had one that fought with a similar sized red tail shark all the time.The only fish that gave the shark as good as it got

 

[gman]

I had a 6" 4 line pim that I gave to one of my buddies who had 4 6" oscars. The morning after I gave him the fish he woke up and it had ripped apart and killed all of his oscars.

 

[dodgefreak8]

this 8" guy defends his territory in my tank but he gets his ass handed to him.. he is defending it against my 16" royal clown knife

 

[rumblesushi]

hey gman, I remember that - you told that story a while ago right?

Don't you think it's strange that these supposed community fish can be so aggressive?

My pictus is not quite on that level, ripping oscars apart, but it's very aggressive.