Should I Be Worried?

[vmsyvert]

i have a ten gallon tank with four black skirts, a otto (i think) and a african dwarf frog... Three of the black skirts are ganging up and picking on the fourth... could they be male, and the other female?? are there other reasons they would pick on the other??

 

[vmsyvert]

there were two smaller ones added later (about 4 months after the first two) the one being picked on was one of the bigger ones (one of the older ones)... The older ones faught earlier, but they picked on eachother equally... now none of them are really schooling... is there anything i can do??

 

[NEONCORY]

Hi vmsyvert,
Since I never owned the black skirt before, I can't advice from the experience but generally most Tetras would do better in bigger school. However there is only so much room for your 10G tank. But I think it is possible to add 2 or 3 more and sometime the aggression would spread out. However it is almost necessary to quarantine the new fish so your fish you already have will not catch any dieseace the new fish may have. I do not know if you have quarantine tank or hospital tank.
Also fish is like a people sometime some fish is more mean than other even they are same specie. Sometime their temperament is different by the way they grew or kept or even genetically.

So it may help to get few more but nothing is gurantee. For now I would say do some water change and rearrange the decoration maybe add more plants and decoration so there are more hiding escape spot for the fish getting picked on. If adding more stuff do not help then, I think it would be good idea to get few more.

Hopefully you get more advice from someone who has kept these fish.

 

[vmsyvert]

they were quarentined for a while, but that was when they were just added... maybe they were just determining pecking order... they have many hiding places, and he would go an peck at others in return so i'm not sure... they are fine now, and it looks like he is leading the school now...