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Hello, TL;DR I was sold some fish at Petsmart that I was told were White Cloud Mountain Minnows, but they don’t look like the original minnows I got from the LFS and they’re acting aggressively to the other fish. Are they actually WCMMs or something else? I kept Betta fish for a while over a decade ago and now that I’m settled in again I want to get back into the hobby. I went to my local fish store recently and they suggested I start my 6 gal tank with White Cloud Mountain Minnows. I asked if they could be kept in the same temperature as Bettas and he answered yes. Came home with 3 minnows and some plants and after I did quick reading, come to find out these fish are cool water fish, not tropical. Really annoyed me but whatever. Just didn’t use a heater with them and the water temp is holding at 72. Within 2 days the largest one died. So I had 2 left, brought the dead one back to the LFS with some of the aquarium water because I wanted a new fish. They tested the water and everything was fine except for 0.25 ppm Ammonia. They wouldn’t give me a new fish because they claimed that’s what killed it (even though the others were fine). I didn’t want my other fish to get stressed out so I went to Petsmart and bought 2 more. I took them home and I’m realizing they don’t even look the same. They’ve been swimming aggressively at the other fish in the tank and now the 2 original WCMM are getting stressed out and floating at the top of the water. What’s going on here? Do I actually have 2 incompatible fish species? I’m getting driftwood ready as we speak (been boiling wood for 2 days trying to get the tannins out) so that the tank has more hiding places but I was told these fish are very peaceful. Thanks for any help!

So I have a new-ish 20 gallon long, fully cycled, and this is what I have in there: 10 Harlequin Rasboras 3 twin bar Platies 6 Panda Corydoras 1 Dwarf Gourami I also have a lot plants for such a new tank, I’ve got a about 5 Java ferns, some Anubias, and jungle Val. All the fish enjoy swimming through the vegetation. Tank also has an Aquarium Co-op medium sponge filter and a Tidal 35 HOB for some extra water clarity. My concern is my dwarf Gourami. I bought it fully knowing the risks associated with their aggression. So far mine has been pretty calm BUT has “snapped” at a couple fish. If he roams the bottom and a panda Cory gets a little too excited he’ll snap at it. Same with the platies. He doesn’t chase anything except for the harlequins on an infrequent basis. I think it’s because the harlequins could be a bit hyperactive at times. My water parameters are near perfect, but I would like to raise the hardness just a bit for the platies. is he just the “boss of the tank”? He seems to inhabit the two top left corners of the tank, which is really cute because he likes to rest on and under the plant leaves. He doesn’t pick on the other fish during feedings, and mostly sticks to floating pellets. He’s actually starting to become a sort of “wet pet” for me. He likes to come up to the front of tank when I get close. I would really love to keep him. any thoughts?

does anyone on here keep mbuna? i'm having some problems that i need some help with

So I have a breeding pair of angels. The female hasnt laid eggs in probably 2 months but had 2 spawns previously.. and now the male of the pair is actively becoming aggressive to the female.. Is this normal? Suggestions? If I remove one for one to heal is it going to ruin the breeding pair? Thanks in advance!

So, I have noticed an odd behavior in one of my danios, and I wanted to know if anyone else has experienced anything like this before, or has any insight on this. Backstory: Tank is a 55Gallon approximately, and currently houses 8 zebra danios, 11 cardinal tetras, 2 young (pre-breedable/sexable) bristlenose plecos, 2 nerite snails, and a few snails that probably snuck in on some Co Op plants. Ammonia/Nitrite both have been consistantly 0, nitrates were between 10-20ppm, and have been declining since ich, and feeding has been reduced. Tank has been treated for visible ich for the last 5 days, (caught very early, 3-4 visible spots on a few fish, mostly the cardinals but there were a few on danios, I have no way of knowing if the danio in question was affected.) and today will be the last day, as I've seen no visible signs, unless I see something tomorrow morning. Danios seem to stress a little when I added the meds, as they went from basically being all over the place, to all of them at once the first time I added it, second day about half of them schooled, the rest were completely oblivious, and remaining days, they might have schooled for a short period, then went back about their lives. From what I can tell, danio X is a male, please correct me if you know me to be wrong. The Spawn-Camping: So the best I can describe the behavior is that he is camping in this one spot, and chasing (almost) all of the other danios away. There was one time I noticed an exception where he and an apparent female, seemed less like they were chasing, and more like what I witnessed in an example egg-scatterer breeding behavior video, where they were moving in more of a dance, circling each other and even touching a few times, though they were away from his "camp," but not super far. it seems like he may have been either eating something coming up from the rocks, or attempting to, maybe...? (i've been staring at him quite awhile today, I might be making things up in my head.) From the research I have done, I didn't find anything substantial about danios being territorial, nor any kind of egg-guarding behavior, in fact I presume they will eat their eggs, due to their general derpiness. I have no reason to believe he is ill, or that something is wrong, when I shined a flashlight in to see if I noticed anything in the cracks, he fled pretty quick, and has been very energetic in chasing the trespassers away. Any insight or theories, or potential experiments to find out more would be greatly appreciated. I am really enjoying danios, and their general crazy derpieness, they may get their own tank when I get my angelfish, as I suspect they will annoy the hell out of my angels! My theories are: Guarding terretory Guarding eggs Guarding something delicious that is HIS! Just being VERY committed to being a derpy danio I shot 2 videos of the behavior, a 5 minute real-time video, as well as a time-lapse over 2-3hours while I was doing other stuff. Real-time: Time-lapse:

I've heard that bettas in the wild will generally retreat instead of fighting another Betta and that got me wondering, How large and/or heavily planted would a fish tank need to be to support two or more bettas. I am asking this because I am curious and not because I am considering this for a setup.

Hello, all my Platies are aggressive toward each other. I have 3-1 female to male ratio. My Bubblebee Male Platy attacks a Female Red Tuxedo Platy (who may be pregnant) . The Red Tuxedo attacks a Blue Female Platy but won’t attack her when Bumblebee is around. I had Bumblebee in a time-out and she went right back to attacking Blue. Blue will attack a Female Carolina Mickey Mouse Platy when it’s feeding time. Bumblebee gets along fine with Blue and Carolina but can’t stand Red and literally will launch at her. I have Red in a Ziss Breeder Box (BL-3T) for the time being. The other fish in the 20 gallon high tank is 1- Bolivian Ram and 5- Corydoras and they’re all fine. It’s a cycled tank that has lots of live plants. I purchased the Platy’s from a local fish store and they came from the same tank.

Hi All, Newbie here.... I set up a new 9 gallon tank and put my male Betta in, next day I got six ember tetras. Well Betta is attacking and killing tetras one by one : ( I thought they were good and/or acceptable tank mate for him. Anyone else have this problem? The Embers were juveniles and quite small, not sure if that had anything to do with it. Maybe rasboras will do better or maybe he is just a very aggressive Betta and I should just let him have the tank to himself? Thanks!

Hi all! Short version (tl;dr): Newly added female guppy immediately started harassing established female guppy, which quickly devolved into an ongoing fight with no one backing down. What is the best course of action? Full story: Our display tank is a 20g high, stocked with 1 female guppy (we'll call her the "old female"), 1 female platy, and 5 zebra danios. Everyone is very peaceful and gets along well. Tank has been running for three months, is fully cycled, and has lots of hiding spots and line of sight breaks (no live plants, but "lush" with fake plants). We've had another male and female pair of guppies in a quarantine tank for 4 weeks with no signs of illness and never any hostility towards each other. The female even dropped fry in the quarantine tank and the adults ignored them despite no hiding spots! So I finally moved the new guppies over to the display tank today, and after cleaning up for a few minutes, I came back to observe. The male guppy was exclusively and AGGRESSIVELY harassing the old female, who is close to twice the size of either of the two new guppies. The old female was mostly tolerating it, but trying to focus on her algae grazing. However, the new female was right there with them and she also started harassing the old female- lasered in on her and pecking at her sides. This continued for a little bit until the old female started fighting back, and then they went at each other for several minutes until I used my net to separate them. Unfortunately this was not a serious solution and the old female found the new female again and immediately went after her. At this point, I removed the new female and put her back into the QT. I also turned the lights off in the main tank for the rest of the day to reduce stress and skipped the evening feed. As far as I can tell everything has been fine since then. I tried to research female guppies fighting, but couldn't find much info out there- doesn't seem all that common. My best guess is that the male saw a large female for the first time and released a hormone explosion into the water, which made the ladies go bonkers?? My plan right now is to reintroduce the new female in a breeder box in the next day or two and let everyone get accustomed to each other's presence before the fully releasing her. Good plan? Is this normal behavior? Any other thoughts/suggestions? Thanks so much in advance to anyone who takes the time to respond. This is our/my first tank since I was a kid and I am super into it! I'll be happy to provide more info if needed.

Started into a water change in my 65 community, and my angels didn't take too kindly to it. Turns out they paired up and laid on some of my bigger crypts. I'll give the mom credit, she didn't hesitate to go after my hand when I went to start trimming the plants. I'm not planning on pulling the eggs, I'll just let nature do its job. It must be something in the water today, my rams are all colored up and causing a stir too, lol. Edit: attack of the flipped picture, so I added another

I have a little female GBR. The intention was to have one male and 3 females in a heavily planted 29g. The hobbyist I got them from had some issues, and long story short I ended up with a mated pair and a third wheel. I am super torn, because she is getting picked on, but she isn't injured, just rejected and chased on sight. This doesn't really seem to deter her, and she will try to insert herself into the pair, and seems to be getting enough to eat. For a week there was a bump on her had that seemed like she had injured herself, but it resolved without meds. This is the dilemma--I have many other tanks she could move to, and be the single cichlid show piece, but none are at 83degF. For instance, she could hang with adult guppies...but the water parameters are just too different. I have a beautifully aquscaped mostly empty tank with a mature bonsai planted with nana petite...but the plants in that tank might melt at that temp, it is currently unheated, and it is not technically mine, but one I am holding for a friend. Killing their scape would be a grave transgression, though they would love her in it. MOST of my tanks are unheated. I can't decide if she is happier where she is, getting picked on --just the way cichlids are?-- or if I need to make her her own tank, very inconvenient, or try to house her at a lower temp which is trading one problem for another, or find her a new home with someone else... You can see in this pic that she is colored up a bit, but sometimes she is pale and washed out, trying to lose a pursuer. It was constant at first, but things are maybe settling down?

Hi everyone! I have a question with a story lol 😆 I have a "pair" of youngish Apistos I got from my LFS. Did my normal quarantine time of 3 weeks in my 10 gallon before introducing them to my community. The female was/is very shy and sensitive to anything she sees as scary, while the male is super confident and social and is never, ever, a bully - with the one exception of his "mate" the female apisto. I took her out of my community tank after about a week as she wouldn't eat anything but frozen brine and was starving and super stressed. I had her in my quarantine tank for the past 3 weeks and her condition improved. But I reintroduced her to the community tank hoping her counterpart would have improved attitude but sadly he's even worse. Is there anything I can,do to fix this or do I need to return her? I was hoping to breed them in the future 😞

Hi everyone! These two are my Bolivian Rams. They live in a, heavily planted, 75 gallon tank with 2 bristlenose plecos, 20 rummynose tetras, 10 pristella tetras, and 6 platys. I originally bought 4 of them from a Petsmart because they looked so beat up I wanted to try and revitalize them. I'm glad I did because they are awesome fish! Unfortunately, during the process of deworming them I lost 2 to camallanus red worms (since treated with levamisole). Now I have the problem of the one on the bottom bullying the one on the top. They sometimes patrol the tank together but the one on the bottom gets very territorial with his food. I would like to have more Bolivian Rams in this tank anyways but i'm not sure how to go about adding more. This one of the bottom is obviously the tank boss so I'm worried he will fight a lot more if he doesn't have his 3 foot of space like he does now. So how many more Bolivian Rams would you add to the tank? Should I remove the alpha male before adding the new rams then bring him back after they are acclimated, or should I just add the new rams after their quarantine and monitor? It's a standard 75 gallon tank with tons and tons of plant cover/wood/huts so I think there is plenty of territory for them to divide up. Also, are there any ram experts that can sex the one on the left? Thanks for any help! Feel free to ask questions and i'll be happy to answer them.