Aquarium Drama

Now that our platies have declared a truce among themselves for well over a year and have stopped alternately impregating each other and biting pieces out of each other’s fins, by far our most difficult tank-bound characters are a plecostomus (Mr. Plec), a largish white angel fish (Angel Fish), and a newly blue crayfish (Crawfish). Mr. Plec and Angel Fish were both inherited from my younger brother. Mr. Plec came as the first colonist, leaving the brother's tanks to start ours; Angel Fish was taken in as a refugee when brother and his wife left the country for a few months.

Crawfish was our own idea--we wanted to have a second tank and had both grown up playing with crayfish in various streams and swamps around our homes. We thought we’d have a tank with one crayfish and 5 - 7 small schooling fish. A few casualties later, Crawfish is now the sole inhabitant of a large tank which he regularly tries to escape.

We had first brought over Mr. Plec to start the crayfish/fish combination tank (he’s proven quite good at this), thinking that the morose and anti-social plecostomus would enjoy a less crowded home. It turns out that Mr. Plec and Crawfish liked the same spot under the same rock, which led to fights. Mr. Plec could bat Crawfish back several inches with a spasmodic whip of his body, but Crawfish had claws, and even though he seemed to be taking a regular beating, Mr. Plec quickly got some snips in his fins that worried us.

We transferred Mr. Plec back to the other tank. Eager to demonstrate his gratitude, Mr. Plec instantly changed from a grumpy curmudgeon--hiding in his rock cave and refusing to come out except in the middle of the night to snatch some food--to a pillar of the community, regularly visible and ostentatiously doing his part to clean the algae off the side of the tank. His obvious delight, as well as his sudden assumption of his rightful responsibilities, convinced us that he at least should stay in the original tank.

A couple of weeks later, we transferred our four red-eyed tetras over to the crayfish tank. These silvery little fish generally stay near the top of the tank, so we assumed they’d be safe from Crawfish who--despite his best efforts to get out by inching himself up between the glass and the filter or by climbing the aquarium plant to the top only to have it double over under his weight and slowly deposit him on the ground--remains disconsolately earthbound. Unfortunately, the tetras proved to be more curious about than frightened by their new tankmate, and developed an unhealthy habit of hanging out just in claw reach. A few mornings later, I came down to see an incredibly self-satisfied Crawfish polishing off the last morsels of a tetra. We moved the remaining three tetras back to the other tank.

But now we have a dilemma. Mr. Plec and Angel Fish have been fighting. Earlier in the week, Mr. Plec was chasing Angel Fish. This is fairly common, and we normally restore order by rapping on the tank a few times in the direction of Mr. Plec, who hates any disturbance. However, this morning, Angel Fish was the instigator, and their interchange became wild enough that Angel Fish and Mr. Plec both ricocheted a couple of times off the walls of the tank, making enough noise that Riggs went over to investigate, hoping for (at the least) a mouse to kill. My husband rapped on the tank and spoke sternly to both, while Riggs watched smugly--very aware that it was not he who was being disciplined this time.

The talking-to seems to have held for today, but it’s an open question now of whether one or the other needs to come over to Crawfish’s tank for punishment, to make them grateful by comparison for their lot in life, even if it involves each other.