the psychology of bullying... what to do?

[judy]

Eight discus in 78 planted gallons with a couple of angelfish. One of the discus (the smallest,naturally) has clearly been placed at the bottom of the pecking order.. been holding his own for the most part, but today spent the day hiding in the plants, didn't join the others to eat (drifted out a few times to give it a try but got chased back. He's been nibbling on plants a bit, probably sneaking some food while the others are occupied at dinnertime squabbliing).
So I have two bullies doing most of the aggressive posturing.
Do I: remove the two bullies to the twenty-gallon "bad boys" tank for a week or so, then re-introduce them?
Or do I take the nerd out and put him in the 20 gallon hoping to beef him up a little and give him some confidence:confused:?
I'm guessing the concensus will be: isolate the bullies so they have to re-enter what will be, to them in a week or so, "new" territory and they won;t be the top dogs any more...

[Don Trinko]

When you feed the fish spread out the food across the whole tank. It will be difficult for the #1 fish to keep the last fish in the pecking order from eating. You can also seperate the bully.
This is realy normal behavier. I have one book that says that if you take the last (in pecking order) fish out they will just esablish a different"last fish". Don T.

[judy]

Oh (sigh) I know-- there's always gotta be that one poor little devil getting picked on... but I always feel so sorry for that poor little one-- I wish there was some way to mess with their fishy heads so you could somehow avoid that...

[tpl*co]

I've had this problem too where some individual fish just don't like each other and can't get along in the same tank. Took a while to find out who could co-exist in one tank with the rest that could co-exist in another. Hopefully this won't be the case for you.

I'd take out the smallest one and beef him up a bit (you can also see if anything else is wrong with it being in isolation). Hopefully that'll do the trick.

Also, when re-introducing him to the tank, rearrange the tank and probably add him right before lights out.

Tina

[judy]

Ah- ha. May not have been a bullying thing after all-- noticed the little guy trailing a very thin, almost transparent white feces.
Spotted the same thing the other day on one of the angelfish. Thinking hex now, so the metrodazinole's been brought into play, using Jungle's Hole N Head product (and quickly pulling out my two small bags of zeolite I keep in one filter, since the product includes salt and the salt woulda pulled out all the ammonia the zeolite's stored up and spewed it back into the task! WHEW!).
My little nerd perked up in little more than half an hour and was out swimming with the others.
And of course, they all just finished a course of Prazi a week ago for tape worms!
Well, at least the tank should be healthy after this. Unless there's capillaria lurking, and I really don't wanna deal with that!