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Palasia

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May 1, 2006
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Okay, I have 3 Mixed Fruit Tetras, 3 Plecos, 1 Tiger Barb, 2 guppies, 3 swordtails, 3 black mollies, 1 Dalmation Molly and 4 Zebra Danios.

My Green and Blue Mixed Fruit Tetras are bullying my Pink Mixed Fruit Tetra. It was real bad when I first got the tank. My Pink MFT almost died because the other MFTs were stealing all the food (and at that time besides I purchased a 4th MFT which I found out later was really a Black Skirt Tetra (an aggressive tetra species and he was really bullying my pink MFT).

And then I have these Plecos. I named them Algae, Black Ivy and Sharky. Black Ivy is bullying Algae. I put in these algae wafers and Black Ivy always pokes away Algae. Algae isn’t getting much food. What do I do?
 
also, what type of Plecos do you have and what do you feed them?
 
I agree it sound like these fish may need more space and hidding places. ALso barbs and tetras often perfer to be in large groups of there own kind. It may be time to return some of these fish.

But if the tank is big enough an addition of fish plus a lot of decor may be the answer.
 
I'm not sure what kind of Plecos I have. I got them from Wal-Mart and they didn't have a label.
 
Dangerdoll said:
if those plecos are a problem now, just wait until they get 12+ inches each...
yup, yup! :)
 
add lots of plants/decorations to break up lines of sight. this way, they can also set up their own territories and have their own spaces in a more complex environment. if that doesn't help, you're probably overstocked or have species incompatibilities. i've had problems with mollies being aggressive (they had to get new homes).

you really should do a search to see what kind of plecos you have (planetcatfish.com is a great site for that). i'm guessing they're most likely common plecos (Hypostomus plecostomus, is one of them) in which case they'll get anywhere from 12 inches to 20 inches! i had one that grew from 3 inches to almost 8 in three months and also became very aggressive. many plecs often get aggressive as they age. you may want to consider rehoming at least 2 of them. for the time being, make sure they each have a nice cave so they can escape each other and maybe feed Algae in his/her own cave.
 
also, a note about "mixed fruit tetras". they are really dyed black skirt tetras, and are a semi-agressive species. ive seen them tear a bettas fins to pieces.
 
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