a more responsible description...

[Magnum Man]

I was looking up a new fish I had not seen before... turns out they get larger than I am prepared for, so it's not on my short list... but in the description, this was said...
"This is a shoaling species (at least while young)"
...this is the 1st time I've run across it worded like this, & since that is something I've argued for a long time... seems many fish like to shoal for safety, when they are young, but are actually more solitary as they mature, & some will actually kill off others when they get bigger... yet, most sites just say shoaling, like they expect the fish not to mature... it was nice to see it in print...

this was listed this way on Practical Fish Keeping UK...

 

[anewbie]

Yes this is common esp for cichild - as for the killing off - that mostly just happens in aquairums where space is limited. If you stuck them in the amazon the killing in most cases won't happen because they will drift apart.
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Btw angelfishes are typically like this - when young they tend to want to stay in a large group but as they get older and pair off the par wants to be left alone. Sometime they will rejoin the herd after breeding and sometime they won't (in the wild things are very different and they almost always stay in group 'cept maybe when breeding).

But the problem is aquarium behavior really isn't the same as behavior in the wild for many reasons. Of course in this case when i say aquarium i mean typical home aquarium. Naturally for the few with 20,000 gallon aquariums things might be slightly different depending on fish in question and dimensions. As someone with a 600 and 500 - i can tell you those are not large enough for even modest size cichild (5-6 inches) to see much difference in behavior in most cases though i do have one sweet little blue ram in my 500 who has staked out a small area.

My point is these descriptions are all a bit tainted and your part about killing - that is just because you keep stuffing them in tiny little boxes. Be a man and buy that mile long aquarium. that is 500 feet wide.

 

[anewbie]

By the way and unrelated i really wouldn't use dan's fish - they are some pretty slimy advertising. For example they are selling tank raised nijjensi (rio) @ $80 a pair - since they are tank raised and not wc the 'rio' part is just to jack up the price by 2x.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

Be a man and buy that mile long aquarium. that is 500 feet wide.

 

[Back in the fold]

Wouldn’t it be the most wonderful thing to have a really HUGE aquarium ? Not necessarily for big fish but for the reasons stated by @anewbie . To see the behaviors that you will never see by keeping the fish in a too small aquarium .