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Re:SAEs attacking Angels
Ken Guin writes:
> I have just had something happened that I have never seen mentioned on the
> APD before. I have eight SAEs in my 110g heavily planted tank. The sizes of
> the SAEs range from about an inch (six of them) to about four inches (two
of
> them). I also have eight adult angels in the same tank.
>
> About two weeks ago, I noticed one of the big male angels turned sideways
in
> the tank. I thought he could have been in stress, so when I looked closer,
I
> noticed one of the smaller SAEs nibbling on the angel's fins. This
> particular angel had long flowing veils and the SAE was going after them.
It
> seemed that the angel was turning sideways in an attempt to prevent the SAE
> from nibbling on his fins.
>
> I watched for a few more minutes and noticed that two more of the SAEs were
> also nibbling on this angel's fins. Several days later, I noticed that the
> smaller SAEs were doing the same thing to another angel with long fins.
> Since I had never noticed this before, I thought the angels would
eventually
> take care of themselves because they were much larger than the SAEs.
>
> Well, I was wrong. For the past week, the SAEs continued to pester the
> angels and yesterday when I came home from work both were dead. Other than
> the angels' fins being somewhat frayed, there were no other signs of
stress.
> These were very healthy two-year old angels and the remaining six are in
> great shape, so I don't think they died from disease or bad tank
parameters.
>
> If the angels died because of the SAEs' harassment (and I believe they
did),
> could it be that the SAEs were starving from lack of algae and they decided
> to feed on the angels' fins. Has anyone else ever noticed such SAE behavior
> before?
>
> Any suggestions as to what might be going on here would be greatly
> appreciated?
I have 4 SAEs and eight angels in a planted 55 gallon. So far, no problem.
I have two possible sugestions, and without actually being there, I can't say
either of them is even close to correct.
1) Are you sure you have SAEs and not flying foxes? If not, check some of
the web-photos to be sure.
2) Algae and fungus are pretty similar in "feel" (let's not get a flamefest
going now about systemic differences, I know the differences.). maybe they
taste similar. Are you sure the angels didn't have something growing on
their fins? It's unlikely that the SAEs would develop a taste for fin and
then stop when their first targets were gone. I had a CAE once (and only
once) that slowly and systematically wiped out the majority of my tank before
I figured it out.
I've had swords nipping at angel fins until they were pretty tattered, but
the angels never died from it.
Bob Dixon