When discus battle...

I was over at _david_'s yesterday and observed his discus "battling". There has been spawning activity of late so it was know to David which fish were males and which were females. It appeared that it was the females that battle with each other.

By battling I mean two fish approach each other face to face and square off, with fins erect and appear to be trying to lock jaws and push each other back. We observed this several times.

My question to those who have seen this behavior is this:

Is it usually female/female that do this? Or do male/male do it as well? Or will a female and a male square off and if so is it likely the two will pair off and breed?

Or is this a completely randon behavior that can happen between any two fish, regardless of sex or breeding activity?

Just questions I have pondered since seeing this behavior.

Daniel

Dan,

I actually have never experienced that with the my Discus, but definietly have when I used to keep Angels. That would happen with either sexes, but usually the males were the brutal ones. They would get on opposite corners of the tank, shimmy & shake at bit, then ram each other like a couple of Mountain Goats. They also would try to "out push" one another, until the weaker one was backed into a corner. I got to the point where all I had to do was point my finger at them and they would stop for awhile. Usually didn't last long tho. :-\

Julz

Thanks Julz.

I forgot to mention that these discus were also doing the head shake and fin twitch during these episodes.

Daniel

i had to reprimand a fish earlier just like that, pointed my finger. ha, it works doesn't it?
i have seen males and females play all kinds of parts, but the worst iv'e had was a "secure" male and female. i had temporarily put another male in their tank, for only minutes before i could extract him. he took some hard blows from a large, fast moving fish. i bet it hurt.
one of my favorite corulean females, "she breeds with anybody", also has one of the most violent tempers when it comes to testing her "new mate". she never fails to spawn for them, but she may devastate him after the fertilization! she raises babies herself. cg

Dan,

Sounds like competition over a mate, general disagreement or possible he doesn't know 100% that they both are female. Or they are young and just practicing.

It does sound like mating behavior, but fish do things for fishy reasons, so you never know what's exactly going on...

John

cichlids will be cichlids ;D

Thanks gang.

So it sounds like my instincts and common sense were basicaly correct. There is no way to tell for sure if battling discus are of the same sex or not.

It just appeared that in the particluar case I observed it was the known females (known because they lay eggs ;)) that were battling. So I figured it might be safe to assume this happened like this all the time. There were plenty of males that were also in the tank but they were left out of the fighting. Only the females were doing the battling and the breeding female was taking pokes at the other two know females in the tank.

Daniel

I've got one that I'm 99% sure is a male, although I could be wrong. It almost killed a known male when I had to re-introduce them for a day in order to move a tank.

But, even though I think it's a male, it acts like a male and looks like a male, it has never successfully spawned. Will all females lay eggs? This one never has but always tries to fertilize. Could be just a cull...

I have it in with a known female and they have spawned about 7 times and recently it has been VERY aggressive after the spawn and wants to fight the female every chance it gets.