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SAEs and Aggression
Hi,
The following comments have been raised regards a tendency
for SAEs to display aggressive despite the general feeling that they
are social fish. I'd like to add my observations. The three SAEs in
my tank are now about 1 1/2 inches.
>> The other thing I don't care for about SAEs is their
>> tendency to get territorial toward their own kind. I
>> had three in a 20gal tank and the slightly larger, and
>> therefore dominant, one always chased the other two
>> away from food. They actually starved to death. Now
>> the dominant one is alone and will remain that way.
I have had a very similar observation. All three are similarly sized. I
will take careful note to see if the aggressor is _slightly_ larger. The
behavior is also transitory and I have been searching for a pattern: is it
when algae is low and appears scarce? Is it a defensive reaction to the
other fish invading "its" terratory or an offensive behavior where it goes
out of its way to chase the other fish? Is it gender related?
>I have SAEs in two tanks (a pair in each). The large pair
>in one tank are and have always been entirely social - they're
>rarely move than a few inches apart. The half-grown pair in
>the second tank chase each other about - they don't seem
>nearly as social as the adult pair but they also don't seem as
>aggressive as Roxanne describes. Could this be a gender
>difference? Perhaps individual variations? A different but
>similar-appearing species?
So far the aggressive behavior hasn't caused starvation but I continue to
consider that the one fishes behavior is not fair to the other two and
perhaps I should remove him. Have others had similar experiences? I
think somewhere there's a common denominator here.
Thanks
Christopher Coleman
christopher.coleman at worldnet_att.net