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something strange happening in my tank


ryan

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In the corner of my tank a whole bunch of stones have been moved and it has left a patch of bear glass at the bottom. I have 6 angels, a fighter, a pearl gourmi, and black ghost knife in there. Any idea who this was, and does it mean they are horny?

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I guess it was the Angels. I've never seen my black ghost dig, but almost every cichlid I've got seems to take great delight in rearranging gravel, digging up plants, and generally making themselves at home...

I've never bred Angels, but it a couple have paired up they may be making a safe place to rear the fry?

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Actually, I doubt it was the angels. A fish needs a certain amount of mass in order to move anything underwater (you try pushing a boulder while swimming and see how it goes) and due to the shape on angels and the way the pectoral fin keeps them from getting leverage I doubt they'd ever be able to do any significant earthmoving.

While looking at your list of fish, I can't see any that would do any digging unless your ghost knife was really trying hard to find a hiding place. My guess for the cause of the pit would be some kind of water flow. Have you done a water change lately?

Interesting mystery. Craig is right though, it sounds like cichlid behaviour. Could someone have slipped in a convict without you noticing? ;)

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It is definately not the water flow because the filter is on the other side of the tank and there is little flow were the tunnel is. It seems there could be a good chance that the ghost knife has out grown her old home when i think about. I try to find something bigger for her, and see if the whole comes back. :bounce:

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Are convicts known for that kind of behavior?

Yep, they dig big pits to raise the fry in. They'll lay their eggs in a cave or other secluded place, and then transfer the fry to the pit in the gravel and guard them there. When they get a bit bigger the parents will escort them round the tank looking for food, but they head back to the pit as soon as anything threatening appears (like a gravel vac :). It's cool watching them head about the tank looking for food, the females will thrash about in the gravel stirring up all the surface muck for the fry to pick over for edibles.

Single males will also dig pits just on the off chance that a female drops by. The guys in my oscar tank must have moved kilos of gravel about, and they must be getting pretty frustrated by now :)

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Gee, that's cool...it does sound like its fun to watch. So, convicts don't eat their young then?

You couldn't put plants in with them either then could you? Probably read it here somewhere at some point in time but don't remember :oops:

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Hiya Caper!

We're good. I (Blue) am going through the rather frustrating process of trial and error to get a good successful discus spawning. Other than that, going back to Uni in about 2 weeks and have recently bought a home about 40km outside of Wellington (the capital city of NZ). This is allowing me for enough room for a decent fish room setup and I'm actually now slimming down my collection to make room for proper setups (getting rid of nice tanks with cabinets and hoods for racks of tanks, if u know what I mean).

Soo..... that's about all, for now.

Ryan - any clues to solving the mystery of the gravel pit?

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We moved in almost two months ago and are now just getting to the end of the long list of must-dos (and money, too!). With a rather long commute to/from the city it will be a life of long days and trying to keep up with tank maintenance afterwards.

All very exciting, yes, but a lot of hard work. Thanks for the enthusiasm, though! ;)

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