Grayed out garras fighting or what's up?

[janma]

Two of my biggest Panda garras are grayed out and having a go at each other. All colour is gone on body, just gray. But the fins are really red. Fight club or?

[wasserscheu]

Janne, seems some coincident that I have one pretty greyd too recently. Normaly mine don't really grey a lot when they perform their "head-banging", which typically goes pretty relaxed non of the "players" actually claims anything afterwords, appears to be almost like some reaction training. But their snouts are somehow a bit shinier afterwords
Don't know neither what's up with mine, he is a big strong one and spends a lot of time in a small tank (own choice) these days.

[ch.koenig]

hi Janne
do they look like this?

that s fighting. these two do it regularly for some minutes. then the alpha-male separates them. a behaviour similar to cyprinids of lake Tanganjika. probably to prevent the attention of predators (H. Büscher)
cheers Charles

[janma]

Like that, maybe even more gray/white. First time I saw it, they are the two biggest ones of the 13 I have. Thanks!

[wasserscheu]

same here Janne, normaly the pic Charles shows, does apply exactly to my normal "play-fights" (as I call it) - including their eyes turning red (the dark stripes in the eyes remains black).
But the current grey is different, shows the entire fish in much darker colour, I never witnessed that before. I even took a photo of it, but with the flash the dark does not really show, found that interesting in itself. I will see if I can take one without flash too, if it shows again.
I found 2 of them im the moss-tank this morning, close to each other. But that my just be, because there are always G.rufa fry and eggs available, and they may just have found the source for a fresh snak. Last night non of the eight was seen in the main tank, that was somewhat weird.

[wasserscheu]

forgot to mention that my "abnormal-greyed out" one (found no photo) has no red fins like yours Janne, just overall darker,

here a pic. of the G.flavatra taking position starting the head to head duel and the grey-out similar to Charles' above



A short video how quarrel starts in that case with little "sidekicks"

http://s119.photobucket.com/albums/o143 ... 89wmam.mp4

here some quarrel:

http://s119.photobucket.com/albums/o143 ... 90wmam.mp4