Evil Fish: stop aggression in your aquarium
- Jul 28, 2020
- Anshika Mishra
- 590 0 0
It is a pretty common problem in fish keeping to have an evil fish. A fish that is wreaking havoc on your aquarium. Beating up other fish and possibly even killing other fish in your tank. The question is what do we do about it?
When you have an evil fish, the first thing that you want to ask is; why is it behaving that way? What is causing it to want to kill all of these other fish in the tank?
Well, there are a lot of potential reasons behind a fish being so mean. We'll be looking at three main causes of aggression.
1. Fighting over girls
There is nothing to explain why they fight over girls. If you have a female fish in the tank, the males will relentlessly try to mate with them. While also fighting with all of the other males off, so he can have her to himself.
2. Territory
The fish claims an area as theirs and they are will defend it to the death. The fix for this type of aggression is easy. Just redecorate the tank. If you move things around in the tank, it resets the thing and confuses the fish into thinking they are in a whole new place. And the hope is that will forget about that spot that they claimed as theirs.
3. Hierarchy
Fish, particularly African Cichlids develop a hierarchy in the tank where one of the males becomes the alpha and everyone else falls in the line; crowning him the king. If this happens that one male takes over the tank and everyone falls in line; it's a good thing. Hopefully, everything will be peaceful for you. But sometimes there is a Beta that just can't seem to fall in line. In this tank, the beta fish would be the fish that wants the crown and will not give up until it's his.
So, what happens then and how do we change that? Well, if you have multiple tanks that it is pretty easy. Just take the beta out and put them in a separate tank, and everything should settle down. But, what if you just have the one tank that you can use for African Cichlids, What do you do? Well, that is when you try the 'time-out' method.
Time-out method
A time-out would be when you remove the fish from the general population. You put them somewhere by themselves and hope to reset their attitude. This could be another tank if you have. The next best thing to use for this would be a breeder box.
Put them in there, leave them for a weak or so and try again; now see if they behave. Sometimes, every time you try this, they have instantaneously gone on right back to wanting to kill each other; wanting to kill the other fish in the tank. It's just a disaster they never stop, they are relentless.
Get rid of them
If none of this helps then it's time to get rid of the problem fish, I know no one wants to hear this but you have a couple of options.
- If, you have a friend who is a fish keeper; try giving them away to him. But tell your friend that this fish was a problem in your tank.
- If you don't have anyone then take them back to the fish store where you bought them from. Most fish stores will take is back from you. Sometimes you might get lucky and they might even give money for them or even a store credit.
Yes, it is unfortunate but sometimes you got to do what you got to do. So, if you have evil fishing your tank tries redecorating the tank if that does not work try time-out methods. Hopefully, you have multiple tanks. most African Cichlid keepers do; put them on a time-out in another tank or try the breeder boxes.
If none of that work than you have to get rid of the fish, unless you want them to be chaos, non-stop, and keep having fish die. But for God's sake don't just go throwing them in a lake or a pond or anywhere else.
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