cory bullied

I have one female molly she is probably 2.5-3inches. She is constantly bullying my six cats during feeding time. pushing them aways with her mouth. There are times cories just let her pound on them because they don't want to give up their food, other times, they swim away to avoid her.

Do you think the molly will hurt them? Does she have teeth? It didn't seem she is biting, more of pushing with mouth. Fortunately it is 6 to 1 ratio. Is there any way to reduce her aggression? So far, cories are doing well.

 

I would keep a close on the cories to make sure they are getting enough to eat and are not getting actually bitten and injured by her. You could feed the cories at lights out and that would probably help. One of my tetra's does this to my cories and I haven't had any injuries or problems, I just attributed it to hungry fish going after food overzealously!

 

Watch your cory's fins especialy. While your molly, to my knowledge, does not actually have teeth, I've seen (and rescued) corys with their fins bitten entirely down to the bone by aggressive tank mates. A way to help reduce aggression during feeding is to offer two food sources; for example, provide a sinking wafer for the cory cats to feed on at the bottom of the tank, while at the same time, provide some floating flake for your molly to feed on at the surface.

 

Unfortunately, there are times where some fish are just aggressive, no matter what you do. I've had fish that I had to get take to my LFS just because they were aggressive to everything.

But as stated above, I would try a variety of food. I use small pellets, large pellets, and flakes (as my tetras just ignore pellets). But in the end, all of my fish get something and don't get too aggressive during feeding.

 

I've had a similar problems with my platies and cories. I've tried quite a few different combinations of food and nothing has worked very well for me so far. My platies don't ignore anything that might conceivably be food. They eat flakes, pellets, wafers, everything. My attempt at using wafers at night was actually disastrous. The platies literally chased the cories until the next morning hunting down every scrap of wafer. I can't put enough flakes at the top to keep the platies busy long enough for the cories to eat either pellets or wafers because it takes them some time to absorb water and break down. I'm just hoping the cories are scraping by with the leftovers, though I'll admit I don't see much in the way of leftover food.

 

try shrimp pellets as a bottom feeder food in combination with the flakes on top. The shrimp pellets dissolve much faster than your average bottom feeder wafer. Also, if you put your flake into the filter outlet, instead of floating it on the surface, it forces your top feeders to chase it around the water column which gives them a nice work out, but also helps to distract them.

 

My largest pregnant guppy gets this way and gets more pushy as she gets closer to dropping the fry. It's harmless in my case. She does it to everyone in the tank, but mostly bullies the other guppies. If I spread the sinking food out across the tank, she just patrols the sites and continues the behavior. The Cory's seem to fare better now that there are 6. When they all drop on the location of the food, there's not much room to get in there and she doesn't try as hard to bully her way in. Occasionally she nudges the Cory's if they don't move, and other times she eats the food with them with no problems but gives them 'looks'. It's kinda funny.

 

I've tried sinking shrimp pellets in combination with floating pellets and flakes both. Neither one seems to help much. My platies just eat the stuff on top too fast, and two of them have even realized that there is better stuff on the bottom so they hardly go up to the top anymore. Thankfully my platies don't nip, but they do chase the cories around and nudge them whenever they find something interesting on the bottom. The one that stalks the worst also guards areas where food tends to get caught from the other platies. She's a gorgeous fish, but very mean.

I'm hoping once I can finish up the cory school that it will be a bit better because the stalking will be more spread out.

 

Another suggestion is to use more low "plant" cover; use some pieces of driftwood and low wide spreading plastic plants and ornaments that make it difficult for upper level fish to get to the sinking food. I've used this technique with a surprising level of success trying to divide food between my comets and weather loaches (much larger scale situation, but the personalities and behaviors involved are pretty similar).

 

thanks everyone for suggestions. I do have OMega One shrimp pellets (sinking) and Tetra flakes and frozen blood worms. The problem is that Molly will never get enough. She finishes the top, then quickly descent to the bottom for pellets. I also try to spread out the food so she can't control all the food. I think cories will get enough, but with abuse. If not during feeding, molly is a good girl, she doesn't bother nobody (she actually hides most of the time)

It sounds like my molly behaves very much alike the Dria's platties, except I have only one molly. Origianlly I was thinking get some Platies, but I am afraid it is not a good idea.

So far nobody is harmed. Everyone is healthy. I think my molly hates peppered cory most. She always chases him away, sometime literally goes extra mile. She is relatively ok with albinos. NOt sure why.

Other than that, I love my molly, she is a beautiful dalmation molly, and very strong and healthy. She survived the initial tank cycle. So she is a hero (maybe that is why)

 

Oh, I don't mean to malign platies in general. Three of mine are quite nice, one is a real bully, and one is in the middle. I'm sure that I'm much more traumatized by the whole thing than the cories are, they usually just swim away and settle down somewhere else until she gets bored of following.

 

have you tried fedding at both ends of your tank? so its takes time for them to get to the other ends after finishing at one end,that's what I do but mines a 5 1/2 footer heh

 

Mine is three feet and I sprinkle across the whole length. I crush up the flakes pretty fine so I'm not feeding a lot, just spreading it out quite a ways. The platies go from one end to the other with their mouths open at the top, scooping up every bit of flake like vacuum cleaners! And in 20 seconds when all of that is gone they go eat the pellets or wafers from the bottom.

I think I'm going to try wisecrackerz's advice. I'm trying to plan out a restructure of my plants and driftwood to see if that helps.

 

I think it probably bothers us more than cories. They seems to be doing just fine. My tank is also 36 inches long. I used to drop pellets only at one end, but now Iam spreading at diff. locations. This morning it was interesting. I usually feed at night once a day. But I saw molly was hiding under the rock. So I quickly dropped a couple of pellets far from where she was. But within seconds, she came out. She feeds exactly like the platties, vaccuming the surface LOL

I observed another very interesting interactions between cories and serpae tetras. Serpae usually don't bother cories, neither do they go up surface for flakes. I found them following cories everywhere. Finally I found out why. As soon as any pellet residues were stirred up by the cories, they snapped it very quickly. And they know well, wherever there are cories, there are food.

If we say molly is abusively aggressive, serpae is quietly aggressive. Poor cories! In my tank only guppies and neons leave them along