Territorial discus

[M0oN]

Alright, well I know there aren't many solutions short of taking him out of the tank, but I thought I'd ask...

In my 5 foot long tank I've got a single discus who spends ALL of his time swimming back and forth as fast as he can at the bottom of the tank to keep anything else in the tank from eating food off it, obviously the other fish have time to get pecks and nibbles in and eventually all get fed, but it's still pretty outrageous to me that a fish, especially a discus would be this food crazy...

Thoughts?

[kjmillerfw]

I had one like this Moon. I had to put a tank divider in when I fed them or he wouldn't let any of the others eat. I also used the divider for an occassional "time out". I kept thinking he would grow out of that phase, but he never did. This particular fish recently died and it's amazing how peaceful the tank is now.

I never found anything else that worked with the exception of taking out the aggressive fish and separating him.

Kathy

[M0oN]

Well, him and another female are near breeding size, so it won't be long before the others can have their peace and quiet, unfortunately it's an acrylic tank, so the top makes a divider impossible.

He was never like this until I removed a larger breeding pair, I think it's because one of them was his "mate"...he's been showing stress bars ever since.

[M0oN]

I moved him to one of my apistogramma tanks, so problem solved for now, hopefully being reintroduced to an established pecking order a month from now will help things settle a little.

[kjmillerfw]

It sure can't hurt. ;)

I hope it works out for you.

Kathy

[M0oN]

Solved the problem by moving some sponge filters around so that there are visual barriers and he cannot just dart across the bottom without running into em'...he's calmed down quite a bit :)

[xen]

Heya Moon,

I'm very much a beginner with discus, so take any advice I offer with a rather large grain of salt ;-)

That said, I've noticed that most of the time when my red turq (alpha male) gets territorial, it will be around "food territory". I used to use a worm feeder with blackworms in the tank. The problem was that the red turq would eat his fill, then spend most of hit time 'defending' the feeder against the rest of the tank population.

Same thing happens if I overfeed with bloodworms.. as soon as he gets bored with eating, he'll defend the patch of gravel with bloodworms on it.

I've found that splitting the feeding areas (feeding from two places) helps a lot, as does breaking up of the terrority (like it sounds like you did). Also, feeding them more gradually is a big help. If I break off bits of a 'discus dinner' beefheart pellet and drop them in, there's a lot less aggro than if I just dump in the whole thing.

Anyways, glad moving sponges sorted him out ;-)

Cheers!
John