Tacit Blues
Aquarium Advice FINatic
So my planted 45 gallon aquarium has been running for..about six weeks now (fish-in cycled and a bottle of safestart, it's been very stable from the start so I think I lucked out with the bottled bacteria--at least judging by the horror stories I hear on the internet), but my 8 mostly aggressive (formerly ten--one, without apparent injury or illness died, and one was definitely killed from injuries) head an taillight tetras are still beating up on each other. The one lowest on the pecking order is definitely injured, missing scales and hiding under the driftwood, much like the last one who died. I can't figure out why they are being so aggressive to each other--my only thought is that maybe they're all (or almost all) males despite the odds of picking out 10 random fish from the LFS, and are just beating up on each other.
When I started out with these tetras, my end goal was to have them and a large group of Neons, but I'm kind of scared to add any other fish while this aggression is going on. I just rearranged plants to try to break up the sight lines a bit more, but being a young tank nothing has filled in a whole lot (though I have been pretty happy with my Anacharis, it's going gangbusters). Right now I'm just sticking in a holding pattern, hoping the H&L tetras will sort themselves out at some point, because I just can't figure out anything else to do for them.
I guess my TLDR question would be whether or not you would wait and see or just bring them all back to the LFS if possible and try something else--and while I'm at it, what else would you try?
When I started out with these tetras, my end goal was to have them and a large group of Neons, but I'm kind of scared to add any other fish while this aggression is going on. I just rearranged plants to try to break up the sight lines a bit more, but being a young tank nothing has filled in a whole lot (though I have been pretty happy with my Anacharis, it's going gangbusters). Right now I'm just sticking in a holding pattern, hoping the H&L tetras will sort themselves out at some point, because I just can't figure out anything else to do for them.
I guess my TLDR question would be whether or not you would wait and see or just bring them all back to the LFS if possible and try something else--and while I'm at it, what else would you try?