Cichlid Aggression - When is it too much?

[Peltier]

When do you make the decision to rehome a fish?

My black acara is the king of my tank. It gets along fine and is very chill until there is food in the water. Then it eats as much as possible along with all the other fish, but when the food starts to all get eaten and only a little bit is left, it gets a bit territorial. It does these quick bursts where it chases any fish the size of a Ram or larger that is within its view and within like 12-18 inches. Basically like a quick but powerful nudge attempt as a reminder to get out of its way. It never makes contact with any fish, they get out of the way in time.

Is this normal behavior you would let slide or is this continuous stress enough to make you want to get rid of the fish?

I have tried to give it a 'time out' when feeding, but it just is not feasible to catch it every time I feed the tank. The second time I tried, it took me like 10 minutes to get it.

Edited January 14, 2023 by Peltier

[Rube_Goldfish]

The closest I've come to rehoming is when it turned out that my male:female pair of honey gouramis whoops, were both males. One of them matured and grew a little faster than the other, but as the smaller one caught up, they eventually worked out some kind of division of space for themselves. But I did give serious consideration to bringing one of them back to the LFS. I only had one tank at the time, but I'd even gotten to the point of setting up a Rubbermaid tote as a "fish jail" for the bully when they mostly stopped bothering each other.

Anyway, I get it. It takes what's supposed to be a relaxing, enjoyable hobby and suddenly has you worrying that some of the animals under your care are stressing out the others. You're right that catching him out every feeding time is impractical. If moving him to another tank won't work (not everyone has MTS...), could you feed a little on one side of the tank, to draw him over, then feed everyone else on the other side while he's distracted?

Ultimately, if you're not enjoying his presence, and if you can find a good home for him somewhere else, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Hopefully some of our veterans here have some ideas.

[BlueLineAquaticsSC]

Aggression among cichlids is very common, I expect occasional torn fins and but wounds. In my experience they can be like chickens where they can have a pecking order which may lead to the bottom of the chain getting picked on to much. Lots of hiding places can help, dither fish can help. I also would heavily over feed to make sure they all ate enough and just increase maintenance and have an army of snails to help with the waste. If you have one that’s noticeable more stressed, muted colors, heavy breathing, always hiding, not eating, etc. you might want to consider rehoming him.

[Guppysnail]

My rule of thumb for rehoming fish is if injuries are occurring on the regular or the stress of worrying over it are becoming my focus instead of the joy when watching the tank. I only have 1 group of cichlids (GBR less aggressive) though and aggressive fish make me nervous as a whole so I am not a great person for cichlid advice. 

[dasaltemelosguy]

On 1/13/2023 at 3:44 PM, Peltier said:

When do you make the decision to rehome a fish?

Basically like a quick but powerful nudge attempt as a reminder to get out of its way. It never makes contact with any fish, they get out of the way in time.

Is this normal behavior you would let slide or is this continuous stress enough to make you want to get rid of the fish?

I have tried to give it a 'time out' when feeding, but it just is not feasible to catch it every time I feed the tank. The second time I tried, it took me like 10 minutes to get it.

In my limited experience that's nothing to worry about. My GBRs and Electric Blue Acaras make sort chases, 8"-12" all the time, but it's never gone beyond that. As @Guppysnail said, if there's no signs of stress, signs you'd think might cause long term health issues, they adapt to each other. My severums poke and also make short chases, as you described but I've never had an injury. 

I had two notable exceptions to this though. My sojourn with African cichlids was nightmarish. They would form packs and relentlessly target an individual to death, usually at night, until that eventually whittled down to a dominant one. This would change periodically, and new targets would emerge. Apparently, they weren't dithered well enough, and I know the tank I had was too small. I seemed to be rehoming them monthly until I rehomed them all!

I had some success with time-outs too, but it was always short-lived. Sight blocks and rearrangements were more successful for me. 

A better example of them adapting to each other was my Oscar tank. He is extremely aggressive and tolerates almost no other fish, but he was dithered with a school of silver dollars. He still chases them, but they clearly don't care. He chases them to the ends of the tank and seems to lose interest. The dithers resume and return to wherever they wish and seem unfazed.  It's been three years without an issue. 

Please ignore the video title, this video was made to help ID a parrot fish type-(40 Seconds).

 

[Peltier]

Thanks all. Yeah I likely don’t have much to worry about based on your responses.