Happy Fish or Sad Fish

For me, just watching the behaviour of the fish over time gives me an indication on its happiness. Right now I have 1 unhappy fish, my yellow coris wrasse. When I bought it a couple years ago it was really tiny and happy.. but in the last 2-3 months it has been freaking out.. darting back and forth at the top of the tank and violently scratching against rocks/sandbed. There is nothing physically wrong with the fish, no parasites that I can see, no scratches on it, even though it is scratching itself on the rocks. All fins look great and it eats like a pig.. but I can tell by its behaviour that it has outgrown my tank at this point and needs a bigger one. Luckly I am going to be setting up a bigger one in a few weeks so hopefully that will solve my unhappy fish problem..

That's how I tell on my fish anyway.. just weeks/months/years of observing their behavour, coloring, eating, so you can tell when they are not acting "normal"

Maybe he wants him some more featherdusters to munch on?

When my fish are depressed they listen to a lot of Radiohead...which is enough to want me to keep them happy.

As we all know, Radiohead really sucks.

:lol:

I agree...both on radiohead and with what Ace said. You can definitely get to notice behavior differences. Take a yellow tang for instance, is it showing it's night colors during the day? Is it holding it's dorsal fin erect all the time? Is it hiding all the time? All are signs of stress and a stressed fish is not a happy fish.

awww i love radiohead

Then, I guess, you are one unnnnnhappy fish!

Fortunately I don't listen to much music made since 80s, so I have no idea who Radiohead is, and from the sounds of it, I'm not missing much...

When my maroon clowns were young though, and the dominant one went through the sex change and became a female and starting beating up on the male, I did catch her listening to Helen Reddy's "I am Woman." She may have been happy, but the male definitely wasn't, and neither was I.

I can tell from my fish's behavior too what mood they are in.They swim around and act all happy most of the time,my yellow tang is very moody and she has days where she just wonts to pick on others in the tank.My picasso always seems happy and acts like he owns the tank.He acts like a 2 year old sometimes,at feeding time if I feed the puffers first he acts like he gets mad and will refuse to eat and if I watch any of the fish to long he swims by and blocks my view or ignores me entirely,,I really think they have behavior that tell you just what they are thinking.