Survival of the fittest??

[travelinman1969]

I was watchin my fish today while handing out candy and they all seem to be geting a bit aggressive. Not sure if it has to do with the fact that I just started feeding them other foods, in general, chicken. The plecos are fightin, the 2 big osacrs are pickin on the albinos, the one bala is bettin the heck out of the other, blah blah blah. It's an all out war in there. Is this a survival of the fittest contest and should I be worried? The arowana is the only one clear of it all.

[Geographer]

edit- deleted due to content

[dwf73]

Well, they are agressive fish for starters. I don't want to worry you, but it might be that the tank is a bit too cramped with the number of large fish. Do you have a smaller tank, like a 50-60 gallon, that you could possibly move 2 or so of the oscars into until you get it resolved? That may be a sound approach. good luck with sorting it out

[Geographer]

edited again.

[wengdragon]

Is that possible that they didn't get enough of the chicken?
they might start fighting because they feel the resource is not as much as before so they have to take other out?(30%sure)
Or maybe the live food awaken their aggressiveness and desire to fight. (50%) any way wish these help

[SimonWoodstock]

is it just me or is geographer everywhere...anyway, i would say it could either be a space issue or the new food. pretty much what everyone else said.

[Geographer]

Wherever there is geography, there is the geographer.


Muh ha ha

[cdawson]

Geographer: You're weird dude. Why would you want to eat your fish? OR feed german sausage to your fish?


Anywho... that fact that 150g is so over crowded is the reason that the aggression is happening. With nowhere to run and hide the bickering between the fish continues. Also you really shouldn't be feeding chicken to your fish, stick to seafoods.

[SimonWoodstock]

Originally posted by cdawson
Geographer: You're weird dude. Why would you want to eat your fish? OR feed german sausage to your fish?

the question that came to my mind is....why would he want to pay $40 for an oscar just to eat it?

[yashinfan]

Yea, just out of curiosity, but Geographer: Do you come to sites like these just to talk about how you can eat fish and they can eat people? Or do you actually keep fish for a hobby? No offence, but it's kind of lame... You sound like you're in high school, not grammatically or syntax, but just how you act! Grow up, I don't think anyone is on this forum for the purpose of wanting to discuss how fish are going to kill eachother, that's not too wise of an investment if you ask me.

[rich]

i never thought id see a forum troll at a fish forum board. kinda funny... and sad.

[Geographer]

Yes, I keep fish. I am only trying to have fun by posting silly questions. These forums seemed dry,and I wanted to inject some humor. Some people got the joke and made fun or interesting replies. I guess most of you here do not like jest. I will now be more solemn in my posts.

[Geographer]

Hey slipkottin, what happened to a few of our back-and-forth replies in this post? A significant chunk of our disscussion is missing. I know you continued this post in chit-chat, but our replies are missing. No cencorship please. ThankYou

[Dale W.]

Censorship is what we do as mods and admins. If the content of your post requires it, then we will do so. My advise to you would be to keep your posts within reason.

I will refer you to this thread.
http://aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=13016

Thanks

[Geographer]

They are within reason. Slipknottin is just biased toward geographers.

[cdawson]

Dude if you want to talk about useless crap go do it in chit chat.

[Geographer]

I took your advice cdawson.Thanks

[ewok]

nice job derailing the thread.

travelinman: i noticed when i used to keep snakeheads and had to use live food it seemed to "up" the aggression a little. another thing that increases aggression is them not having enuf food, they will fight over it more. that is at odds with your water quality issues tho, if you overfeed your water quality is going to go downhill fast. the arowana is the biggest thing in the tank and that's probably why it is being left alone for now.

another problem, when keeping large, aggressive fish you should introduce them all at basically the same time as youngsters. in the long run they will get along better.

they are all getting older now and their aggressiveness is starting to show.

as far as solutions, i'm amazed someone hasn't said something earlier....... you are WAY overstocked. the arowana alone is too large for the tank in the long run. unfortunately i have a feeling you're going to have to learn the hard way. i did, alot of other people did too. as most of those fish grow up they're going to get more aggressive and you're going to find out you have to do more and more water changes to maintain water quality and your fish will start dying either from the lack of water changes or the aggressiveness they will grow into. i know they're all great fish, but i think you need to rethink the whole aquarium. "just" the 4 oscars should have something along the lines of 150 gallons, they are fairly large, messy fish......

you should also discontinue the live feeders unless you grow them yourself. you stand a really good chance of introducing some sort of disease to your tank like that. they also don't really have the nutritional value your fish need. it is suggested that oscars have a fairly varied diet to help prevent HITH disease. you didn't mention what you feed the balas or plecos either, they need something other than live feeders or chicken, and despite your probable nitrate problems, the tank pics didn't show much algae.......

i wish you'd do some reading, but i can't even think of the right place to show you to start.
www.thekrib.com
www.skepticalaquarist.com
they have good basic reading......

good luck