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I have 6 Yasuhikotakia sidthimunki's in one of my 265 gallon tanks, I also have 4 very large 12+ inch bala sharks in the same tank. The sids will not leave the bala sharks alone... they keep coming up and "cleaning" or picking at the bala's almost like flies. Has anyone seen this behavior before? Are they just cleaning or trying to nip the bala's?

Thanks.

That is really interesting. Any chance you can get a video?

In small groups sidthimunki's will follow other fish, bigger fish will be able to tolerate it but smaller fish like danio's etc wont.

My first group of 10 terrorised a group of Danio choprae and Puntius gelius constantly, once I added another 10 sidthimunki's they stopped chasing fish and interacted with each other a lot more.

Now that I have added a further 16 to the existing 20 sidthimunki's they I cant recall the last time I saw a sidthimunki following a fish other than another sidthimunki.

It is highly unlikely that the sid's will cause any damage to the Bala sharks they just seem very inquisative of tank mates

I have seven sids, and i've noticed them do this to my two SAEs. The SAEs are medium sized, and are the largest fish in the tank. It really does look just like you said - like they're cleaning them. The SAEs just go about their business and the sids lose interest after a few minutes. I've only seen this twice, and I have no idea what it means either.

I've read that Sids like bigger groups...

It may help to get a few more sids.

Rocco wrote:I've read that Sids like bigger groups...

It may help to get a few more sids.

That certainly made a difference for me although 36 might seem a little excessive but looks very impressive

Wow, i bet that's lovely MD, any pics?

daspricey wrote:Wow, i bet that's lovely MD, any pics?

Some videos here:
http://forums.loaches.com/viewtopic.php ... idthimunki