Violent Hillstreams?

[turtleguy146]

My river tank has been setup for a few weeks and yesterday I introduced the last of the fish i intend to keep in the tank: Two fat, old, greedy
Siamensis Algae eaters. I could never have imagined a conflict between the hillsteams and the siamensis since the loaches hide in caves and the algae eaters prefer to just roll in the current, but a few minutes ago i watched the largest of the siamensis, about 4 inches long and very fat, just lay down in one of the small caves that a loach had claimed. (the loach is only about an inch long and rather puny) The hillstream flared up and began ramming into the larger fish and then jumped on him and started darting all over him, occasionally jumping off to ram into him again. This continued for about a minute when the siamensis lost his color and swam away! It really surprised me to see a hill steam loach of all things beat up such a large fish!

[Martin Thoene]

This is very typical sucker-bodied hillstream loach territorial behaviour.

Martin.

[JonasBygdemo]

Feisty little buggers!

[ch.koenig]

yes. that's charming isnt it?
(like swiss farmers versus dukes and kings) sorry for the allusion. that wasn't charming at all. I wanted to say: defending without bloodshed?
cheers charles