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My angel fish is being VERY territorial/aggressive. its in a well planted 55 gal tank. it is currently only 3 inches.
its tankmates have changed alot over the past 2-3 months as it claimes the whole tank, and harrasses, chases, attackes anything and everything that it sees( except the cories). so far it had killed full grown 2 spot gouramis, an entire school of black skirt tetras, several bleeding hearts and buenos aries tetras.....
Ive tried rearrainging, taking it out then reintroducing it, it works for a few days, then its claiming bigger and bigger areas int he tank till it takes the whole tank over again. Now the angel and cories are in one side, the remaining tetras in the other with a divider in between. Even with the divider the angel is watching the tetras and will slam itself into the divider if they get to close......
the remaining tetras will be going back to the lfs this weekend,as the angel wont leave them alone. BUt what could i possibly put in this tank that
1)- the angel wont be able to harrass to death and
2)- wont hurt the angel????
I love cories, and thats working. But id like to have something ( either a trio or school) in this tank besides the angel, and 10 pepper cories.
any ideas????

ok, this might sound a bit extreme, but you'll either need to get rid of that angel, or get a new tank. You could also try re-aranging everything, seperating the angel to a quarentire for a week and maybe add some sort of fish about equal size that can stand up for its self. The thing is that unless you introduce an angel to tetras at a young age, and introduce it into an allready established tank, you're likely going to have problems with it.

ive had this angel for 4 plus months. it was introd to a community tank, at about quarter size.

ive taken it out after problems, kept it in qt for a few days. ive rearranged..... and done this several times.

Im looking for suggestions of what could possibly stand up for itself to the angel, and leave the corys alone , and live in a 55 gal more than anything else.

If you really lurve the corries you may have to get another angel and let the agro one go back to the shop. Sometimes it is just a personality thing.

I had a bad boy dwarf gourami once and a kribensis that was just a demon. I took it back to the shop and it was released into the tank and started chasing and nipping immediately, usually they are a bit spooked after a car ride and transfer, not that one though!

Good luck with whatever you decide.

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i cant return the angel- noone wants it. Its doing fine with the cories- no problems, which is weird cause the cories bump into it doing their little corie thing, and it just ignores them....

Any ideas for tankmates that could hold its own with this angel?? or is going to just be the cories and the angel????

Since it is a planted tank, I don't recomend silver dollars. My SD's stand up to the angel all the time and the angel never bothers them. Other than that...i think it might just be the cories and the angel. Since you can't take it back...

sorry

Dustin

Thanks- i think ill just add another school of cories then.

You know what might work? a mated pair of decent sized kribs- male and female. If they pair off they'll take up a strong teritory in any sort of cave you have- situate one at an end of a tank. The angel likely won't do anything stupid like trying to attack a pair of mated kribs more than once, or even kribs its own size for that matter. Before doing this though you'de have to keep the angel in a quarentine tank for a week and re-arange the tank just to break up the flow of things and its sense of teritories in the tank.

thanks veteric for the idea- ill try that. now to go looking for some kribs.

I would rearrange the tank and add 2 or 3 bigger angels. they will all stake out their own territory and in doing so they should be to busy dealing with each other to notice the other fish.

i thought of that- but almost all fish sold around here are small juvies- no angels bigger than a quarter sized. ive looked for bigger ones, but cant find any.

Upadate- I havent been able to find any medium sized angels still, and cant find any kribs either. So i just switched tanks around.
the angel and the cories are in the 29 gal. My dojos, and danios went into the 55 ( that were in the 29 gal). so
The 29 looks "full", and the angel got what it wanted- the tank to itself.

thanks for your advise- i just dont think anything else is going to work with this angel.

what about a small school of bala sharks they should get along fine with the angel

The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an bacon and egg breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."

Balas get too big for a 55 gallon. They need at least a 125 gallon.

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