Loaches Online Forum

they are Ashleigh, me and Andy got there the day after they were in the shop,
Niel give me a bell the night before to say they arrived and were in good form, so i picked some of the big boys and a few of the slightly smaller fish.
i can't understand how these fights kick of though it's almost instantaneous
and it always starts behind the same piece of bog wood that hides the heater/therm, but there's around 20 pieces of bog wood in the tank.
i'm going to watch more carefully next time.
it could be Manchester water, were a town known for fighting. haha

mick

Mack, no they have'nt got the same reputation that skunks have mate, they're supposed to be one of the gentler group of Botias.

mick

Hmm Il keep an eye out for any within my group. They are kept in the fish house seperate from the main house so the only time I watch them interact is when Im feeding, doing tank maintance or need a break so I could have eaisly missed any quarrels

Ashleigh

It seems to me that Dario's have different behaviour patterns within different aquarium setups ? I'll tell you my experiences a few years ago i had 4 fully grown adults in a 3ft tank , no aggression at all , I now have 18 in a mixed 8ft tank , with 10 Rostrata's , 9 Almorhae's ,and 4 S.Berdmorhae, the void is filled with various Cyprinids , the Dario's are between 2 to 3 inches , no aggression here ! Mick is a great fish keeper and i wouldnt question his husbandry !
The only thing i can think is that perhaps i might have more cave's hidey holes etc ?
Or mine arent as big as Micks and the aggression will happen as they reach maturaty , we shall see !
The four i had before were full sized , so i dont know the answer , I think Mick will veryfy that unless its feeding time then they dissapear ! so they must be scrapping over territory !

thats a possible solution mate, you know i have them pipes that Niel give me, i must get of my bum, cut them up into lenghts and put them all over the tank.

i remember the 4 you had mate and they were always in great condition.

mick

So since we last talked about this subject, has anyone else witnessed theirs attacking other species like I have, with them going for the clown loaches? (and I should point out that the tank is 1000 litres, all of the clown loaches were bigger than the B. darios, and there were 30+ clowns in there when we added the 13 B. dario). Everyone who has seen my clown tank knows just how many hiding places are in the tank with all the XL bogwood pieces that are in there too. At the time, it was no small decision to strip it down and catch out the B. dario - the aggression from them was that bad.

Emma

mine haven't they only scrap with each other.

mick

Emma Turner wrote:So since we last talked about this subject, has anyone else witnessed theirs attacking other species like I have, with them going for the clown loaches? (and I should point out that the tank is 1000 litres, all of the clown loaches were bigger than the B. darios, and there were 30+ clowns in there when we added the 13 B. dario). Everyone who has seen my clown tank knows just how many hiding places are in the tank with all the XL bogwood pieces that are in there too. At the time, it was no small decision to strip it down and catch out the B. dario - the aggression from them was that bad.

Emma

I had a group of 8 that chased my B. straita around constantly. They also chased my C. weitzmani. The C. weitzmani costed a lot more, so the B. dario had to go because I didnt have any take space. I wish I still had them though.

piggy4 wrote:It seems to me that Dario's have different behaviour patterns within different aquarium setups ? I'll tell you my experiences a few years ago i had 4 fully grown adults in a 3ft tank , no aggression at all , I now have 18 in a mixed 8ft tank , with 10 Rostrata's , 9 Almorhae's ,and 4 S.Berdmorhae, the void is filled with various Cyprinids , the Dario's are between 2 to 3 inches , no aggression here ! Mick is a great fish keeper and i wouldnt question his husbandry !
The only thing i can think is that perhaps i might have more cave's hidey holes etc ?
Or mine arent as big as Micks and the aggression will happen as they reach maturaty , we shall see !
The four i had before were full sized , so i dont know the answer , I think Mick will veryfy that unless its feeding time then they dissapear ! so they must be scrapping over territory !

That could be. After all, my Y. eos, which is supposed to be really aggressive, is actually quite placid and only occassionally squabbles with my trio of Y. caudipunctata.

Mike

What i would like to say is , that it would be a shame to taint Darios in any way as being aggresive and un keepable , perhaps a little caution as to the right numbers and tank setup , I know Mick really enjoys his Dario's and is just learning about them as are we all .

Emma did your Dario's just seem to go for the Clowns ,or was it more a case of the Clowns getting in the way , and somehow getting caught up in the melee ? b t w both Mick and Emma love the pics

Its a fair point what Emma makes,about how we usually encourage newer fishkeepers to keep larger groups of Botias , and that perhaps in certain cases we should reserve a little caution ?

B t w if i had to choose a favorite fish , as you might have guessed Dario's would be right up there in the top three

Hi Andy,
The B. darios would do both. Sometimes they would swim along quite innocently, gently homing in on a clown and would take a sudden bite at the fins, other times they would scrap amongst themselves. When they went for the clowns, it was definitely not a case of the clowns getting in the way (although this could easily have happened on occasion) but I spend hours gazing into that tank and on so many occasions observed the B. darios going up to the clowns - completely unprovoked - and biting. This didn't seem to abate, hence the difficult decision was made to strip the tank down and remove them.

Emma

still on darios, in the species index it has the size when full grown as 150mm, my query is in the size books they have them at 90mm.
is there a mistake on the size or have you actually seen a dario 6 inchs SL?.

thanks
mick

emma I was on board with you about the dario!
nippy little buggers.
I finally put a lone mature dario in my grrrr (eos, robusta, and modesta) tank due to it being so evil. It got the stuffing knocked out of it in that tank!
It seems that eos REALLY don't like fish bigger than them.

After a week of it getting beat up I removed it back to my community tank. It has been fine since. Well that and my clowns have grown to over 2X the size of the dario.
I can imagine a group of mature dario could be a real problem.

Interesting observation, newshound. Eos not liking bigger fish than them. Perhaps thats why my Eos has been peaceful..he is prolly one of the largest fish in the aquarium, topping off around 4.5 inches...close to the B. udomritthiruji...but he hasnt been bothering them either.

Mike

mickthefish wrote:still on darios, in the species index it has the size when full grown as 150mm, my query is in the size books they have them at 90mm.
is there a mistake on the size or have you actually seen a dario 6 inchs SL?.

thanks
mick

I think that may well be a size quoted from Fishbase. I've never seen B. dario at anywhere near that size, and I've seen quite a lot of mature specimens. How big are your adults now Mick?

Emma

P.S. For anyone who's interested, new catches of smaller B. dario have just started coming through from the suppliers this past week.