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RE: SAE's attacking angelfish
> 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?>
After following advice on this list, (thanks especially to Roger Miller) I
currently have very little algae in my tanks. Unfortunately in the meantime
I stocked up on a lot of otos and SAE's which were happy with the voluminous
algae before but have little to eat now as far as algae goes. In one of my
tanks I had both SAE's AND otos nibbling on my discus. After losing several
otos and observing some severely paranoid discus, I decided to supplement
feeding by providing long slices of cucumber on a clip. I no longer have the
harassment problem and everybody looks happy.
I now feed cucumber regularly in my tanks and make sure that some sinking
spirulina tablets find their way to the bottom every night. . (Make sure all
the cucumber is eaten in a day or two to avoid eutrophication of your tank.
Not a pleasant sight to see all of your fish breathing at the surface in the
morning)
One curious observation is that my SAE's now act like bottom feeders,
competing with the cory's and loaches for fish food and rarely venturing off
the gravel to search for algae. (The larger ones don't even spend
significant time eating the cucumber) They have grown incredibly fast
however and are pleasant members of the community tank. (Not shy about
muscling in on a tablet however)
I have heard of SAE's being territorial. I know that they are a distant
cousin to the red tail shark and perhaps some of them have that atavistic
territorial gene. My smaller SAE's "quarrel" with each fairly often and
seem to enjoy scattering the smaller tetras but I have not noticed them
harassing the larger fish except when they were hungry.