Nervous Fish

We have a couple of fish tanks. Two of the tanks have Cichlids, Red Jewel cichlids and a bunch of Lake Malawi cichlids. The Red Jewels are fairly aggressive animals so we have kept the young Lake Malawi cichlids separate in a smaller tank while they grow up a bit.

When we were first setting up the large tank, we populated it with a school of 30 odd Neon Tetra. When the Red Jewels were put into the tank, the population of Neon Tetras plummeted to zero in just 4 days.

We’ve put a larger Chinese Algae Eater into the large tank (about 8cm) and it has survived pretty well. A new addition to the large tank is a pair of Clown loaches, they have been having the best time in there.

The small tank, however, is a different kettle of … fish. The cichlids are very nervous. Whenever we go anywhere near the tank, they hide. It looks very much like they are trying to hide something behind their tank furniture. I think that the fish have set up a meth-lab in the tank and they are worried that we are going to put them in to the police.

They are still very young, and I hope that they grow out of their awkward hideaway tendencies.