Gastro Missing Mouth?

[mikev]

The top guy...


...
should it not be something like this:

[loachmom]

[wasserscheu]

hehe... cool smiley... would work in the Emoticons-chart...another LOL task...develop Emoticons from loach motives...

[mikev]

On a more serious note, I'm deeply impressed with these guys.

This is the state of the tank they got on Saturday:



Everything has been covered by diadems, with occasional GSA...I was not cleaning this tank for a month to create a welcoming environment. No brown algae at all by Sunday morning.... I knew that Gastros like it from the past experience, but still did not expect this kind of performance.

Now, I'm seriously tempted to move them to the clown tank for a while... it has quite a lot of diadems too, the parameters are probably acceptable (78F, lots of aeration and fairly strong flow)...if they survive the quarantine, of course.

[mikev]

At least two graduated to prepared food:



The guy on the right kept the guy on the left waiting for about twenty minutes , very slowly eating, but not letting the other to approach. I could see how the second fish was getting upset, until eventually it displayed



and jumped right onto the hoarder....For perhaps 10 seconds they were violently chasing each other tails:



(this is not a peaceful rest, this is the middle of the fight!), then the eating guy went back to eating, and the waiting guy went back to waiting....

Usual Ocellatus, right? I've never seen them so violent yet...

[Whitey_MacLeod]

Don't know about ocellatus, but it sounds like normal behaviour for my cheni. The two rowdiest males will have little intense fights with major darkening and fin displays, and then be grazing together on the same cobble perfectly happy 30 seconds later.

[mikev]

Cheni, yes...
I kept Gastros since spring of 2006 and this is the first fight seen ever. And Ocellatus are supposed to be the docile ones...I thought. Maybe because these new guys are larger than what I'm used to....