My aquarist rant
- Thread starter wesleydnunder
- Start date
Interestingly enough this is similar to what I will be looking at during the course of my 3 to 4 year PhD study. I am going to be changing numbers of schools of juvenile fish and measuring their startle response. I am hoping to maybe get down to measuring things like gill rate, if I can get a fine enough camera, which will allow me to measure not just group level startle response but also individuals.
Awesome Tiff. When you do your study, please come back and share your experiments and findings with us. Please include species, numbers, water volume and anything else which can shed some factual info on this subject.
Mark
I'd happily share the whole report as I write them to be honest.
I started with some of the info that I have already, not from my research but from research I am basing mine on.
I put it here: http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/threads/shoaling-species-number-behaviors-and-science.281799/
I put it here: http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/threads/shoaling-species-number-behaviors-and-science.281799/
OK...here's where I get flamed. Heh...
One of the things that irks me to no end is seeing very large fish in aquaria which are, IMO, too small for them; gar, arapaima, arrowana, pacu, giant gouramis, etc. I see these fish all the time in tanks which allow the fish to turn around and possibly swim a body length or two. It saddens me just as seeing a tiger in a cage in which he continually takes 3 or 4 paces, turns and takes the three or four to the other end. Take the tiger out of the cage and he will pace the imaginary limits of his former prison.
Members of our sister forum will likely take exception to my opinion here. So be it. But whenever I see this I can't help but think, 'Is this to be the whole extent of its existence?' I know, everyone can't have a thousand gallons of glass box so that they can keep a monster. I also see, time and again, people grow bored with their huge gar or peacock bass ( they don't get to exhibit much natural behavior in these situations) and the giant pet winds up euthanized, taken back to the lfs or, what's infinitely worse, released into a local body of water.
Mark
One of the things that irks me to no end is seeing very large fish in aquaria which are, IMO, too small for them; gar, arapaima, arrowana, pacu, giant gouramis, etc. I see these fish all the time in tanks which allow the fish to turn around and possibly swim a body length or two. It saddens me just as seeing a tiger in a cage in which he continually takes 3 or 4 paces, turns and takes the three or four to the other end. Take the tiger out of the cage and he will pace the imaginary limits of his former prison.
Members of our sister forum will likely take exception to my opinion here. So be it. But whenever I see this I can't help but think, 'Is this to be the whole extent of its existence?' I know, everyone can't have a thousand gallons of glass box so that they can keep a monster. I also see, time and again, people grow bored with their huge gar or peacock bass ( they don't get to exhibit much natural behavior in these situations) and the giant pet winds up euthanized, taken back to the lfs or, what's infinitely worse, released into a local body of water.
Mark
Yep, Even members of Aquamojo forum say that the minimum tank is 4 times the fish's length long and twice their length wide. That isn't very far in the right direction but sure beats the examples you've given. That still puts housing an arrowana (12foot by 6 foot tank) out of reach for most people. Can you keep an arrowana alive in less? sure, but this is talking about survive versus thrive.
Why does that matter? I want to learn about the natural behaviors of a species not neurotic ones, and if my charges don't have room to exhibit natural behaviors I've failed.
Why does that matter? I want to learn about the natural behaviors of a species not neurotic ones, and if my charges don't have room to exhibit natural behaviors I've failed.
Funny, apply that to a smaller species. A 3" cichlid in a tank 12" by 6" would be a disaster.
Sure, that comparison does put the territoral "agressiveness" of large cichlids in context though. The bigger the cichlid the more likely it is to be cramped for space socially. If anything relative to length you might find the smaller cichlids just as territorial as, if not more so than, the larger ones given a proportional size tank.
