My hero!

[eudielynn]

I know people think I am nuts when I tell them about Jericho being the peacemaker in my community tank, but he gave me a chance to prove it last night.

My husband and I were in the living room visiting with some friends. One of them was sitting by my community tank and said "Are these two fish fighting?" When I looked, I saw my blue dwarf gourami, Blueboy, chasing my red dwarf gourami, Flame around the tank with his fins all flared out. Flame took off to his side of the tank, and Blueboy stayed right after him. Suddenly Flame turned and started to go back after Blueboy. Then they started "kissing" which is the way they start to fight. They can actually rip each others lips off doing this. I was about to stick the net into the tank to seperate them when we saw Jericho (my betta) come flying up to them. He got right next to them, flared his gills and then very slowly moved between them turning his head from side to side looking at one and then the other with those gills flared out. Blueboy backed off immediately and went back to his side of the tank. Jericho relaxed his gills hung out with Flame for a minute or so and then went back to his cave.

My friends sat there with their mouths hanging open. My husband has only seen him do it once before, but I have seen it at least half a dozen times. I have never heard of anything like this before, but then I know that Jericho is a very special boy. I'm so proud of him.

 

[Polardbear]

I don't think your nuts. I have a female swordtail who will not tolerate fighting amongst her swordtail friends. Whenever the males start having stare downs and circling, Miss Meri will swim between them and give them "the look". If they don't back down she'll flash at them a couple times and if that doesn't work then she'll swim back and forth between them nipping at them. Since she's the oldest and by far the biggest she rarely has to go beyond flashing a couple of times to settle things down. What really surpised me is on the one occasion that one of the males tried to stand his ground and nip back, 4 other females jumped in to defend Meri. That poor boy never gave Meri (or any of the other girls for that matter) any lip again.

 

[eudielynn]

I'm so glad to hear that! I was beginning to wonder if I was seeing things. And people say they don't have personalities.

 

[BettaMomma]

How funny!

I had a situation sort of like that last night - I got a new girly betta - and you all know how haggy they can all be. So I took everyone out, put her in, then put everyone back. Well, when I had very first gotten them all several weeks ago, Cloey was the biggest hag and was nipping at everyone. Soon after that, Millie took over and is now the boss.

Well, last night when I put Nellie (the new girl) in, she was flaring at Millie and if Millie would do anything back, Cloey darted right on through the middle of them with all her fins folded in - swimming as fast as she could. Then she'd escort the new girlie to the back of the tank safely.

They look out for each other
It's kind of sweet how they try to keep the peace.