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My beautifule male anf female fancy guppies have been shredded to pieces on occassion by some mysterious offender. This only happened after I had added a school of these wonderful tetras, yet attacks did not commence until approximately 1 month after the shoal's addition. Do you think it is them terrorizing my guppies? I only have white clouds, cories, and other guppies in the tank.

I've never heard of these tetras being aggressive. In fact, they seem to me to be almost timid. I wouldn't think that they would be attacking other fish, but sometimes tetras do nip each other, and sometimes that does spill over and affect other fish. If your tetras seem to be 'displaying' to each other, and nipping/chasing, then that is probably the case.

Otherwise, I don't know who it would be. I don't know if guppies nip each other or not, so you might want to look into that.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

Strange as flame tetras aren't really known to be fin nippers. Another possiblity is your guppies may have developed fin rot caused by a bacterial or fungal infection. Any how you'll to treat them with melafix to keep any open wounds from getting infected and also help with the regrowth of the fins. Quarantine them if possible and you'll also probably need to do a water change.

It probably is not the tetras as now I have only 1 female guppy left and no further destruction has occured thanx for your help--- I do not think the ailment is fin rot because the fins are destructed in minutes (i mean that I could walk out of the room and when I come back the fins would be shredded in small thread-like strips)

Last edited by zachjc_14 at 21-Nov-2004 16:12

even though you say it's probably not the flame tetras, are you sure you don't have serpae tetras I have seen serpaes being called flame tetras before and serpaes are aggresive and are fin nippers. when i had serpaes, they reduced my pl*cos fin to shreads

cfd

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Billy was a scientist, Billy is no more. For what he thought was H20, was H2SO4

Of all the theories that does make the most sense catfish_dude quit often the aggressive fin nipping serpae tetra is mistakin for the peaceful flame tetra.

My tetras are definitely not serpae tetras, yet they seem more aggressive than the flame tetras described by all of the above posts. These fish were marketed under the name of von rio tetras, and when I looked the true name up on the internet I found that flame tetras are sometimes called this. Could these particular specimens be mix-breeds?

I for one, don't find this occurence all that unlikely. Tetras are nippy fish. They associate anything small and wiggling as food, just because you don't expect a certain fish species to nip doesn't mean they wont. It's most likely not out of aggression but out of curiousity and the allure of an easy meal.

Flame Tets can be boisterous, but it's pretty unusual for them to shred fins as you've reported.

Serpaes, on the other hand, have a bad reputation on the Board in this regard, even though Innes in his venerable book makes no mention of it.

Perhaps Flame Tets manifest the 'part time territoriality' I've referred to in posts on Lemons and Pencil Fish. Look to see if one or two specific individuals seem to be dominating all the action, and look for the kind of 'jousting' I've described with Lemons. If you see it, that's your explanation. They're getting frisky & ready to breed. Time to build that nursery aquarium and start raising baby tetras!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002