There is an old saying that applies here: "You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy."
There are certain behaviors that are hard wired in all creatures. Some are intrinsic and some are adopted early on. When it comes to animals most of this relates to the three things in my current signature. For most fish to survive they need to avoid predation, they must eat and they have a strong urge to reproduce.
Different species have evolved to deal with these things. If a species could not avoid predation, could not find food and could not reproduce, it would cease to exist. So, when we put fish into a glass box which is pretty far from how they live in nature, why should we expect them to change their natural survival strategies?
I do not keep cichlids for the most part. I have lots of experience with some of the plecos which are very territorial fish. To date I have only found one method for preventing this. Keep only one fish in a tank. No competition means no aggression. But is that how most of us want to keep our fish? Is that how most of them live in nature?
Of course one could just keep schooling fish that won't fight each other etc. But that would eliminate a lot of potential fish we could keep. What we should be doing is more in depth research into how a species behaves before we get it rather than after. Just having he right water parameters and food is not enough.
Why do we often hear or read that one potential way to blunt aggression in a species is to increase their numbers. The logic for this is when there are more others about which the more aggessive members must harass, that the agressiong is sppread out among more others which means no single other gets picked on constantly. In theory, that should mean less harm/killing is done.
Over the years I have had a lot of fun learning about the behaviors of my fish by watching them. I have watched my new plecos groups work out their pecking order for both the males and the females. I was tuaght very early on when I had a couple of zebra plecos and was about to purchase a very expensive group of proven breeders that under no curcumstances should I mix my two exisiting zebras in with the new group.
The reason for this was simple. The incoming group had an established pecking order. This process can take mionths of fight and even potential deaths. But once is is settled, the fighting diminishes greatly. But, this does not mean there will never be challenges from below. The lower fish are growing and every now and then I would see two fish fighting. The lower ranked fish has a tendency to want to make sure it is still subordinant to the one above it. Sooner of later the alphas and often the number twos will get old enough that they can no longer hold their position and they lose it. So I would see such fights happening now and then. This is nowhere near what happens when the initial pecking order is being put in place.
I can also tell this story. When I was assembling my clown loach herd there was a fair amount of fighting across the group. As the pecking order began to be set at the top, I witnessed one of the more unusual behaviors I have seen. The top 3 fish had things worked out. And then one day I saw the number 3 fish attacking a much smaller fish down in the pecking order. To my surprise the Alpha dove in and stopped the number 3 fish from bullying the smaller one. It did not take long for number 3 to stop attacking the smaller one. I have not seen this behavior in any of my fish since then.
To this day I still see the alpha and the number two clowns go at now and then. But in this case it seems to be more the Alpha reminding number 2 that it does not get to eat first.
Being able to watch it all is what I love most about this hobby. Keeping fish in a glass box is a lot like what science does in the wild. But I am not a scientist observing fish in nature. I only get to see how they behave in the artificial condition in which we keep them. This is not identical to the wild, only similar in many respects.
What I do know is that I do not have the power or the ability to make my fish species behave as I would like. They will behave the way they have for many years before I ever decide to keep them in my tanks.
So for those of you who want to be fish psychiatrists or psycologists. I suggest we save our time for cleaning tanks, feeding fish etc. and watching them, but let them be what they are naturally.
As always, this is just this person's opinion.
