discus biting each other on the mouth ...

[catfishbone]

can anyone help me ... i got 3 discus in my 4ft tank ... prev was 8 but 5 of them gone kaput out of not sure what caused them ...

anyway ... two of them has been keep on biting each other on the mouth ... if you imagine it ... it looks like a rough french kiss ... make it french bite ...
but luckily the other one as the biggest thing in the tanks become the "wise" one ... kept on separating the two from fighting ...

what would you suggest ???

cheers

andrie

[nicholas76]

straight out fighting in my books!

you need to work on a strategy to calm these buggers down. If another tank is an option seperate seperate!!

[catfishbone]

thanks for the reply nick ...

i went to buy some plants today (no plants at all in my tanks ... :P) and it seems that make them go separate ways now ... only when i stay in front of the aquarium then they start get together again and start the biting session ...

so far is so good ...

cheers,

andrie

[nicholas76]

nice work andrie.

changing there environment can work,

Usually its ideal to take all the fish out in seperate buckets, change the landscape and put them back in one at a time.

You could always purchase more discus as well!! This can change the heirachy.

[catfishbone]

thanks nic ...

will buy some more but not so soon ... :)

[samir]

as long as one is not getting thrashed thats the least of your worries. you should try figure out why the other five went kaput. getting more discus is not going to help. maybe you can post some information about the dead fish, water parameters, symptoms,feeding , mediction etc so that the others here can help you figure out why they died and try prevent the same happening in the future.

[catfishbone]

hi samir ...

has posted in the other thread when i had the problems ... but now the last 3 is all good till now ...

they don't trash each other only when they see each other ... but the good thing is the peacefull one always the one that come to the rescue to separate the two who fight ... heheheh ... :)

seems like there's love triangle there ... since one is blue turq and the other two is white piegon ... and of course the white piegon the one keep on fighting ... :lol:

andrie

[samir]

he's probably trying to say that he's the boss of the both of them. these things happen when a few discus are removed and the hierarchy is broken up. they are both probably evenly matched and unwilling to yield to the other. unless it affects their feeding, general health i would'nt be bothered. i moved my little ones to another tank and they did that for a bit.

[catfishbone]

i agree ... am not worry abt the health as they both look healthy and happy ... just sometimes they doing that ...

food ... i always put food on both ends ... so that they don't have to fight for it ... :)

[nicholas76]

Yep very true Samir,

I remember with some of my breeding pairs they will peck and bite each for the sake of estabilishing who is boss and who gets to dictate terms. And you end up with minimal or no injury!

saying that ive had others that bite and fight each other almost to death.

interestingly enough its not a bad way to determine the sex of maturing fish e.g. males attack males and so on. Again not 100% proven but it can help I feel.

It sounds like Andrie has a tank full of developing young fish! :wink:

Time for some pictures Andrie :D :D

[catfishbone]

will try to get some pics nich ... :)