# Fish shaking, vibrating and circling eachother.



## Amorgan140 (Aug 26, 2017)

I have 125 gallon tank with haps and peacocks in it. Most of these fish are adolescents in their young adulthood. Today I bought an almost full size Ngara Flametail Peacock and put him in the tank. My dragon blood peacock keeps following him around. They keep going to this one particular spot circling eachother, shaking and vibrating. No one has attacked anyone yet but I am worried I messed up the synergy of my tank. I have about 24 haps and peacocks all getting along as much as cichlids can. Should I be worried?


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## Foosball2000 (Oct 16, 2017)

What you're describing sounds like they're just showing off to eachother, scoping out the scene to get a feel of the situation and if the other fish will back down. A similar thing happened when i added a fish to my tank once, it was essentially them going in circles flaring at eachother until they decided to lip-lock and fight. Needless to say one fish won and the other lost, although I was lucky that the loser didn't die but rather just became subdominant to the other. So if you see them start fighting and you're worried that one might die maybe remove the aggressor, otherwise just let them feel it out. Also I find adding 1 fish to an already established tank can sometimes be fatal, you might have to add a few in at once to avoid these kinds of issues.


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## Amorgan140 (Aug 26, 2017)

I added 3 but the Ngara is huge! My dragon blood was one of the dominant fishes in the tank and began following him around. Im pretty sure the Ngara would destroy him but he wasn't backing down. Hopefully it sorts itself out.


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## Foosball2000 (Oct 16, 2017)

You can try turning off all the lights for tonight to keep the tank dark, might help calm them down.


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## dfwcajunguy (Jun 21, 2017)

Those are dominance displays, they are jockeying for position in hierarchy, territory, or both. I've seen it a bunch in my peacock & hap tank... it happens sometimes after big water changes that remove the hormones of the dominant male, causing the hierarchy to reset itself. It can happen when you introduce new fish as well as when you make big rockscaping changes. I've also seen it happen as males enter into sexual maturity and their hormones ramp up and get more spunky. I've not seen it result in fighting in my tank beyond maybe a single lip lock, but I keep mostly very peaceful species (except maybe my dragonblood & OB).

What's interesting in your scenario is that you have an ngara flametail, which is typically one of the more docile/timid species, squaring up against a dragon blood, which is typically a more aggressive species. Given that the ngara is bigger, he'll probably win out for a while based on size intimidation, but I expect one day, the dragonblood will win and take over a more dominant position permanently. At which point, it is possible that the flametail will go subdominant and color down, which sucks because that's an attractive fish.


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## caldwelldaniel26 (Jun 11, 2017)

dfwcajunguy said:


> Those are dominance displays, they are jockeying for position in hierarchy, territory, or both. I've seen it a bunch in my peacock & hap tank... it happens sometimes after big water changes that remove the hormones of the dominant male, causing the hierarchy to reset itself. It can happen when you introduce new fish as well as when you make big rockscaping changes. I've also seen it happen as males enter into sexual maturity and their hormones ramp up and get more spunky. I've not seen it result in fighting in my tank beyond maybe a single lip lock, but I keep mostly very peaceful species (except maybe my dragonblood & OB).
> 
> What's interesting in your scenario is that you have an ngara flametail, which is typically one of the more docile/timid species, squaring up against a dragon blood, which is typically a more aggressive species. Given that the ngara is bigger, he'll probably win out for a while based on size intimidation, but I expect one day, the dragonblood will win and take over a more dominant position permanently. At which point, it is possible that the flametail will go subdominant and color down, which sucks because that's an attractive fish.


Yep, my last and final ngara flametail is currently looking for a new home because he decided that he wanted to go subdominate a couple of weeks ago


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## dfwcajunguy (Jun 21, 2017)

> caldwelldaniel26 said:
> 
> 
> > Yep, my last and final ngara flametail is currently looking for a new home because he decided that he wanted to go subdominate a couple of weeks ago


...and believe or not, in the last week, my flametail has started to color up for the first time now...


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## caldwelldaniel26 (Jun 11, 2017)

Good deal man, I hope he keeps it. Mine still has color, just very muted...


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## PfunMo (Jul 30, 2009)

When in doubt about adding the new fish, I tend to do a restart by moving lots of the rocks and décor around so that everybody is new again. Then with the restart, I make certain that there are far more hiding spots than fish. True spaces where they can actually get fully hidden, not just a place to duck behind a rock while the aggressor keeps chasing. I see way too many tanks set so that folks think they have hiding but what they have is more like a speed bump for the chase as the victim is not able to get totally away while the aggressor forgets about it.


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## dfwcajunguy (Jun 21, 2017)

Good strategy, although I've found with peacocks and haps that it's better to have rock work that provides sight breaks and swim throughs rather than caves as hiding places. If we were talking mbuna I would be in favor of caves instead.


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