school me on the meanies.

[Dmaan.]

Midas and the like have always been the most dependable glass bangers in my experience.

That said, you realize they glass bang as a result of a stimulus poor environment right? Of course, they will do a good bit of it during breeding, but glass banging generally is a pathological behavior similar to the abnormal behavior seen in zoos and prisons.

lol you don't think that fish bite sh*t just cause they don't like it?
you think it's because people don't care right for their fish? lol.

i think you're talking more craziness than common sense to me.

i think it's more of an interaction than anything.
lol a LOVE/HATE relationship, he hates my hands but loves when i feed him.
i love him but hate when he bites me while doing water changes.
makes sense to me.

 

[Ruck Fules]

Below are some cichlids I currently have except for one (#1 would try to kill you and # 10 w/b the least glass banger):

1) Istlanum (consistently a glass banger (big or small tank, solo or community)
2) Barred Midas (glass banger in a small tank, not so much in a big tank)
3) Ubrifrerus (glass banger in a 240 tank right now)
4) Beani (almost the same as an istlanum but not as consistent)
5) Trimac (almost the same as a Midas)
6) Haitiensis (I used to have a big pair)
7) Tetracanthus
8) Dovii
9) Red Tiger Motaguense
10) Grammodes

This is just based on my own personal experience.

 

[cchhcc]

lol you don't think that fish bite sh*t just cause they don't like it?
you think it's because people don't care right for their fish? lol.

i think you're talking more craziness than common sense to me.

i think it's more of an interaction than anything.
lol a LOVE/HATE relationship, he hates my hands but loves when i feed him.
i love him but hate when he bites me while doing water changes.
makes sense to me.

Haha!.... Like I imagined all that! That WOULD be funny!

Do some research in animal behavior. You'll find some interesting stuff.

 

[balton777]

The smaller the tank, the more of a pissed off glass banger they become.

 

[Piranhas and Cichlids]

The smaller the tank, the more of a pissed off glass banger they become.

I agree. In my experiences, it's typically related to the tank size and the fact that the fish believes it's territory exists outside the boundaries of the glass.

 

[cchhcc]

Swim up to a fish in the wild...... Unless they are breeding (and even then in most cases) they won't "glass bang" at all.

What happens in the wild and what we see in a less than giant aquarium are not often the same.

 

[shamrock]

Dmann-why so aggressive-keep it civil-everyone is entitled to their opinion.
And eventhough I don't agree with everything CCHHCC states, I can tell by his posts that he knows a lot about keeping aggressive cichlids.

 

[velanarris]

Cichlids will "glass bang" in the wild as well. It's a matter of territory. The less interesting their territory is, the more territory they seek to control, hence the "glass banging" and insisting that your space is theirs, regardless of whether they can get there or not. For example, Oscars don't necessarily need a tank larger than a 75 gallon tank for a single adult, that single adult will want 10 square feet of space, so if you are unwelcome and you enter a space within 10 square feet of their tank, those that are of normal or heightened aggression will glass bang.

A lot of the "petsmart" fish are not wild caught and are typically bred in dense capitivity (cruel and profit maximizing for the breeders) and so they're desensitized to territory invasion from birth. My wild caught Oscar would glass bang furiously whenever someone entered the room and he was in an approx 175g square by himself, meanwhile a petsmart oscar won't glass bang in the same tank and appears to be "happy" with the size of his territory. He's not, he is just used to invasion and so has a far lowered response to people in his territory.

So you're both right for different reasons.

 

[JioFreed~alias~]

there's this aspect as well,
after months, years of feeding a fish do you think they're going to continue seeing you as a threat or just some giant fish that's non aggressive. after a while you cease being an unknown threat b/c they know you and they see you almost all the time, and become conditioned to things that aren't normal for them to see in the wild like people and hands above the top of the water.

not sure how well this gets my point across

 

[cchhcc]

Yes..... That's a good point. Long term tanked fish certainly lose their fear of what otherwise would be a frightening beast (i.e. their owner!). There is a level of recognition in that relationship.



There is a lot of anecdotal evidence of dubious value regarding this issue. There IS some science to be studied out there, much of it easy to find. Barlow and Loiselle wrote some good stuff on the subject.

A simple way to test the pathological nature of glass banging is to take a previously isolated fish and put him in a very large system with lots of other fish. You will soon see a completely different type of behavior (after a settling in period for the new fish).

The only type of aggression toward humans I've seen in ponds and huge tanks is related to breeding site protection (and that is significantly muted in a community situation). IMO, more nearly natural behavior starts to be seen once a given species is in a system which fully allows for a breeding site of "natural" size PLUS a great deal of other space and a large number of other fish.