I have an extremely agressive western blacknose dace who claims all of my 55 as his terretory and chases fish on all sides of the tank. But twice I noticed something odd with his coloration. The first was a couple weeks ago, the other time was today after i drained water for a water change.
His coloration is usually heavilly speckled but twice it went black except the orange strips on his side which was dull but constantly flickered more brightly. Is this his breeding coloration? Would getting him a female (unlikely as she'd be 12 hours away and under ice) calm him down?
I had an eastern blacknose go into breeding mode before but it never displayed the westerns aggression. (it just tried mating with everything else).
Western Blacknose Oddity
Started by
Guest_FirstChAoS_*
, Jan 31 2013 12:46 AM
2 replies to this topic
#3
littlen
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- NANFA Member
- Washington, D.C.
Posted 04 February 2013 - 01:59 PM
The color change you see that is associated with the water changes is indeed breeding coloration. You will often find that many stream fish will suddenly change color with the addition of clean, cool(er) water. How many other dace do you have in the tank with him? My guess is not enough. It seems like you have a large, mature male who needs something or someone to court. My advice would be to get several more dace. They tolerate one anothers aggression better than other species do. So long as you have adults for juveniles might not take it so well. I once had one large, mature Blacknose dace that did the same thing. He picked on other species all day. Once I added several more dace to make a small school of them, the aggression towards other species stopped.
Hope that helps.
Hope that helps.
Nick L.
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