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This siamese flying fox has taken to sleeping in the bubble flow from a hydor ario.

Fish are odd.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a245/longhairedgit/IMG_6459.jpg

you should flip the picture over, then it would look realistic lol

You're right, fish are odd.

My SAE sleeps in positions just as weird as that.

SAEs, Red Tailed Black Sharks and related fishes have been documented as choosing weird sleeping postures for decades. TFH mentioned this in the 70s, and quite a few books also cover this habit, particularly with Red Tailed Sharks. Basically, they have idiosyncratic notions of 'comfort' during sleep, and will adopt all manner of bizarre postures against assorted aquarium furnishings, seemingly as if they take some strange pleasure out of baffling their owners!

Mind you, they're not the only ones. Some of my Panda Corys adopt weird sleeping positions in Java Moss, performing very good impersonations of dead fish, only to wake up instantly the moment I put food in the aquarium.

Oh, and just lately, some of my Pandas have adopted my Bacopa plants as a second home. I'll have to get pics of this sometime.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Flipped the pic over, couldnt resist. Im still kinda confused as to how having to readjust to the bubble flow could be any more relaxing than being fully awake.

Perhaps its a case of "sleep yourself to fitness" .

That still doesnt explain how choosing the brightest spot with a superbright led glaring in your eyes helps you sleep. Aahhh green , aahhh greeeeeeeeen ZZZzzzzzz*

Must be a stonerfish .lol. Either that or hes waiting for someone to say "3-2-1 YOURE BACK IN THE ROOM".

I knew I shouldnt have let him stay up late watching Derren Brown.

Here's a thought for you ... do you know what your fish's colour vision is like?

It is just possible that your fish cannot actually see green light. Without dissection and laboratory testing of the retinal cells, you don't know for certain what colours the fish can see. Goldfish have been subject to limited investigation of this kind, and have been determined to have colour vision that includes infra red, but which may not include the shorter wavelengths. Quite why this is the case is something of a mystery to me, as red light is the wavelength most strongly attenuated by water, although whether this relationship holds for infra-red wavelengths of the kinds that Goldfish can see is moot.

Just a thought!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Thats a really interesting thought. I obviously can't know for sure, I suspect there probably isnt an experiment that has been done on SAE's , although there certainly has been some research done on piranhas , catfish and many deep sea species. I had assumed that being basically a big diurnal omnivorous tetra relation ,that it would have perfect full colour vision with a greater sensitivity to infra red and uvb than our own species, but I could be wrong. I will begin looking on the net immediately, and I have keyring leds with all different colours, so that fish is going to be tested Results to be posted later

Thanks for the thought Cal.

OK, did a few very dodgy and unscientific tests, tried all colours and the blue made them move instantly, the red made the small tetras move , and the yellow hacked all of them off. Put the green back, no reaction from any species.

I guess that means most fish must be more green blind than blue blind, which I guess makes sense if youre trying not to get eaten by moonlight.

I guess that makes the choice of led easy if you dont want to disturb your fish and still watch them.

Green it is

I've noticed that fish don't react to red light very much, and that's how I usually do my 'night time viewings' of my fish

It could be possible that they cannot see the green light, but it could also be possible that they have become accustomed to it, and do not react as stronly to it

That does seem to be perfectly true for most fish. To be honest I think most of the fish can see all of the colours but some are less bright to them than others. A lot of the tetra family can see red light, research has shown some fish like piranhas have a good range of vision in red light, useful as it is for hunting in murky water since it penetrates better than almost any other light frequency.

This is of course subjective with led lights though, because they are not manufactured with specific light spectrums in mind, and are more for the owners than the fish.All my little test did was show that green seemed to provoke less response. I have a couple of tanks with led's and one is blue, one is green , and the fish all reacted less strongly with green lights when they were swopped over. It might simply be that more of the white spectrum is visible in the blues,yellows, and reds than the greens.

Since when does red light penetrate deeper? I always thought it was blue light, because reefers use bluer lights in deeper tanks, right?

Red isnt useful for photosynthesis, hence it isnt used. In truly deep see conditions some fish generate red and infra red wavelengths via bioluminescence, and they are the most advanced predators. It gives them the maximum visual range in a colour spectrum that most other creatures cannot see.

Fascinating