OK. we are brand new, I have studied this whole process, I homeschool my kids, so they are aware of Cycling Process and I have treated our fish as my own kids these past few weeks.!
We bought a 10 gallon tank 30 days ago. Added 2 (supposedly male) platys on October 1st. (One sunset fire wag and one sunset platy) Our beloved Treasure, died 3 days later. She seemed to be the spunky one (we called her a she, even though we were told she was a HE, but this was my daughters pick) on Saturday morning, she had white around her mouth, just pale like lipstick white lips, which she did not have before. She was acting strange, she was just hanging out on the bottom on the rocks by a plastic plant.
At this time the stress levels was high, (we werent told that the chances of these original fish surviving was not good) anyways, I went out and bought an air stone, (no one told me at Petco that fish needed air supply) bought Aquarium Salt, she stopped eating and was dead by the late afternoon.
Our other fish, Pharoah, who was the timid, smaller one, seemed to be happy as a pig in mud. So it was weird. Jump to 4 weeks later and our Pharoah is lonely looking and (we being a bunch of babies think he is missing Treasure)
So, we decide to get 2 new fish since our tank is registering at 0 for
nitrate and
nitrite! Yeah US!!! we did a partial
water change of 25% and vacuumed gravel added fresh gravel and had the fish sit for 15 mins in the water before sending them into the tank with Pharoah.
Pharoah, who never bothered Treasure for a second!!! immediately rammed this new fish and gave the other the evil eye. He is larger than the others, and picked on the smaller Mickey Mouse Platy the most.
He kinda rams him, he just uses his body to kinda "check" him into the glass and follows him around everywhere. He really pesters the bright orange smaller one, 70% of the time and 30% of the time, he is pestering our other platy, a twin something platy. We believe the are all male. (we can NOT have babies, the kids would freak and I am not a fish person, so I want to take things slow and simple.) We rearranged the tank to throw Pharoah off the warpath in hopes he wouldnt feel so territorial, but it didnt help that much, he still swims around like he is the real Pharoah.
So, is he just establishing this male dominance thing?
Is this stressful? I dont see him nipping at anyone, just the body checks or ramming, I notice. Our one platy tries to help the smaller platy who gets bullied by getting in between them and then Pharoah just chases him for awhile. Is this going to stop? He was all alone for 4 weeks is this just him adusting or what? (we did give him about a 5 min time out in a 5 gal bucket. but didnt want to stress him out too much more either)
Here is the weird thing, This mickey mouse platy (spongebob) seems to be bothered by him and I have seen him try to give back what he is getting but rarely, anyways, he seems to want to HANG with the bully? He seems to follow him and be like a puppy with him even though he rams him and stuff.
He doesnt hide from him, and so does the other platy, what is wrong with them why dont they go hide from him instead of be in his face?
is this stupid? or is there some kind of fish psychology in this whole meeting process? He has been paired with the 2 new fish on the block for about 7 hours now and he is chasing "spongebob" as we speak still.
WHAT DO I DO
?? he is being naughtY!!!
I am anxious to learn the answer.
Thanks !
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