stupid damsels or normal?

sir_dudeguy

New member
ok so i was stickin my hand in the tank putting some gsp in and one of my damsels (3 stripe damsels), the biggest one, kept charging my hand and trying to bite me lol. at first i thought nothin of it cause it didnt hurt or anything, but then it did it again and it caught a bunch of hair on my arm and pulled. lol it actually pulled a couple out. i was like, "you punk fish!"

anyways, is that normal for them to do that? i'm guessing he was "defending his territory?" oh, and how do you tell the males apart from females?

thanks in advance
mike
 
Normal for a Damsel.
You're lucky it didn't grab your arm and throw you across the room.

Personaly I HATE damsels.
Talk about the ultimate Napoleonic complex.
 
ya really lol. And i hate damsels too. i dont even like how they look. I just had them cuz the lfs said to use them to cycle. but i wish i hadnt now that i heard about fishless cycle. anyways, i'm tradin them in as soon as i get back from my trip in a couple weeks. But do you know how to tell the genders apart? cuz i THINK they might be trying to mate...they do some weird little swim/dance in front of the other...

thanks for quick reply too
 
I duno what they breed like.
I too was suckered into buying them to cycle a tank (when I first got into the hobby back in 2003).

I started with 7, ended with 2 and one of those had hidden so well I actualy pronounced him dead untill I broke down the tank and found him swimming for his life.

Mine did alot of odd swimming but it was mostly in an effort to kill each other. :mad:
 
lol ya i know what you mean about the efforts to kill...mine do that all the time, and i've only got 4. cant wait till i get rid of them
 
Might as well do it now.
Your tank will cycle fine without them, and a bit of cycle booster will work better than fish anyways.
If you plan to, then might as well do it before they die of cycling or kill each other off.

I'm not the best with advice, I just really hate Damsels.
Not a big fan of Chromis ether. They play nicer than Damsels for a while, but they still kill off the weakest links it seems.
 
oh its already cycled. been running for about 4 months almost. (i think about that long anyways...cant remember..)
but i just never changed fish...figured i'd get all my other equipment first, and now i'm broke lol.
 
You sound JUST like me when I first got into the hobby.

I went to a LFS, asked them to take care of me, get me a middle size tank that is versitle, and to get me settup.

I ended up being told to use Florida tap water (FULL of ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, and phosphates. Really just HORRIBLE water), he sent me home with about $500 in fake decorations (my wife just ate it up), never even mentioned live rock, and told me to throw the 7 damsels in the tank ontop of the already toxic Orlando water.

Needless to say the damsels that survived the cycle killed off each other. By then I had lost the love of the fish and the aquarium, then the algae started (phosphates and nitrates out the butt). They told me to do a water change, just use more tap water.
I did, and the algae got worse.
I changed more, algae got worse.

I ended up having the tank up for 6 mo. with nothing but 2-3 damsels and a ton of algae.
Finaly broke it down and packed it for moving.

Bought a new home, moved the tank in and left it empty for a year. Got sick of having an empty glass box in my living room so I added some water and visited a LFS, got me head strait, read some books, and finaly found RC.
3 months later the tank is going wonderfull and I've corrected alot of the old mistakes.

Man a fish store like that can totaly drive someone from the hobby.
 
yeah my lfs isnt that bad. really the only thing i dont like about htem is they say to cycle w/fish. they all recomend liverock, RO water (that may be just so they can sell their RO units) and stuff. and the fish are generally pretty healthy....never had any of their fish die on me.
 
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