For the most part I've found centrarchids to behave rather like the more bellicose neotropical cichlids in terms of their tolerance of conspecifics, and to a lesser extent, to heterospecifics. These observations have been both in captivity, and in the wild. Of course, the crappie - being schooling fish anyway, seem to be quite docile with each other and behave rather like festivums and other "friendly" cichlids with each other.
However, in one tank with mostly small crappie and a few gills I have two smaller pumpkinseeds which seem to seek each other out and engage in no chasing or nipping at all. Likewise, in another tank with larger fish, I have 2 redbreast and 2 pumpkinseeds all caught from the same stream and about 4" TL. While the redbreasts are brutal to each other the pumpkinseeds have harassed the dominant redbreast to the point where i no longer fear for the life of the subordinate one. Like the smaller pumpkinseeds, I notice that outside of very occasional dominance tests the two larger pumpkinseeds tend to hang around each other all day and seem to enjoy each others company.
Do I have odd fish, or is this normal?
Edited by IvanMike, 20 October 2011 - 12:04 PM.