Serpae Problems

[UBigBobby]

Picked up 12 Serpae Tetra's today. Everything I found online said they were peaceful to other fish.

WRONG.

I have a 40G, with the 12 Serpaes, a couple Dojo loaches, Red Tailed Shark, and Keyhole.

They quarrel amongst themselves of course, no big deal. Small fin damage, nothing major...I hope.

My shark minds his own business but is the king of the tank, unequivically. When I put the serpaes in he chansed them menacingly for a good 30 minutes to assert his dominance, but never tried to hurt him.

Problem is that the stupid Serpaes occasional pick on the shark. One will come and nip his fins (the king has a small tear in his fin now!). When one does this it sets the shark off and he goes on a rampage attacking every serpae he can for a good 20 seconds, and he then goes about his business again, until another serpae acts up.

Will this calm own over time or what? I mean I have 12 of them...that should be enough to allow them to quarrel amongst themselves and leave the others alone.

Any ideas/suggestions/info?

I lost all my TB's becuase they looked too much like the shark so he killed them. He doesn't seem to mind the Serpaes too much except for when the get too close...and they seem to have a habit of doing that.

 

[kevin_kay]

sup UBigBobby, I've had Sarpae's before and I agree the some websites are wrong when they say sarpaes are peaceful community fishes. From my experience I would have to say they are meant to be in a semi aggressive community tank. They are known to be fin nippers and to their credit most websites do mention that, however, the part where they say that most Sarpaes will stay to themselves if kept in a large enough group seems false also from my experience. They seem to be naturally nippy and will nip almost anything in the tank. The problem is that their nip is more like a bite because they actually have teeth in front of their mouths that can and will do a significant amount of damage. Also, those teeth are there for a reason, which implies that they are predators so when ever they can nip at something they will and any weekend fish ex: stressed from nips - will eventually get nipped even more until it dies of something. But then again I have no experience with shark tolerance and aggression so your shark may be able to take it in stride You'll need a shark person to help you there.

Given all that, I don't think even with time or an increase in tank size will stop them from nipping your shark totally. They could start nipping him less with more space, which I tried at first because they were picking on Black Skirts so i put them in a bigger community tank. And they did get used to my other tetras eventually but still nipped once and a while when the felt like it. If you don't want to stress out your shark or in my case my other tetras, you will probably have to move them or get rid of them some how. I eventually put mine in my snail/feeder fish tank, which I use to feed my Figure eight puffers. They prefer eating my snails because they really don't have to work too hard to eat them, whereas when I used to put the sarpaes it took my puffers around 3 hours to slowly kill it. Yeah I know its cruel, but at least my puffers get some much needed exercise and some fresh food. I was going to give them back to the lfs but then I said I might as well use them as feed, my lfs only allows you to return fish but you get nothing in return except the satisfaction of saving your fish and giving it a better life. Its really up to you and what you are comfortable with. I hope this will help you make your decision. Good luck!