What To Do With Fighting Zebras

[Andrew C]

I have a 6ft * 1.5ft * 1.5ft tank with ten zebras of varying ages in it and normally have; two caves for the two large males and 11 various slate hiding places for the rest of them to have a place to hide in.

After a spell of feeding live white worms to the zebras, i ended up with outbreak of planaria, these critters are hard to get rid of.
Anyways for the past couple of months the zebras caves have been removed every week and everything scrubbed and syphoned, to try and get rid of the planaria.
(*edit* the zebras are only removed from their caves, not the tank, when cleaning)
I know this makes them reclaim a territory again, but the thought of getting some eggs and planaria getting to them is really annoying me, though i am beginning to realise how much i am upsetting the zebras with weekly scrubbing.

I never really saw my zebras fighting apart from the odd usual tail slapping amongst the smaller ones.
I did have a death a couple of weeks ago, but the fish that had died looked a bit swollen and i assumed it was something internal as the other zebras seemed fine and peaceful enough.

In the last week i have noticed another zebra just dosn't look right, always pale looking and from its dorsal fin to it's tail, it looks reddish under the skin, though it could just be the lighting.
Now tonight, after cleaning and scrubbing the tanks, i find one of the large males looks beaten up, while the other large male looks fine.







The two males.


The two males.


If i calmed down on the cave scrubbing will the zebras calm down a bit and possibly not fight as much, or was this unavoidable with a such a mixed group in one tank ?
I can only see one course of action now, take some of my other fish back to the fish shop and split my zebras over the smaller tanks, and put the rest of my other fish in the big tank, though i am not sure of the sex of some of them !

Is reddening under the skin a bad, and what is it ?

[thebuddy]

k im not an expert so wait for somone more experience to awnser but
from what i know redening means there stressed and you fish is probly the reddest zebra ive ever seen i would seperate the to fish that fought. put the one thats injured in his own revovery tank/breeder trap so he dosnt get attacked again

as i said im not an expert on zebras so wait for mceve or rob or barbie or somone else however in general if fish fight you seperate them fast

[Andrew C]

Thanks Buddy
The redness looks worse in the pictures than when you actually look at them, the tank lights must be exagerating things a bit.

I will be moving them to different tanks over the weekend and splitting the group up.

[thebuddy]

another thing is that only the biggest male in a group will breed so by splitting them hopfully if you have 2 females you might have more fish breeding at a time

[madmoroccan]

Another option which I have used with puffers is to separate the tank with a piece of driftwood (creating a border along the floor of the tank) to break their line of vision.

I am surprised I haven't seen any pleco keepers use this method as it has the potential to work even in breeding.

[McEve]

I think the constant disturbance of the tank will have stressed your fish, and will have made them more prone to territorial fights due to the constant moving around of the decor.

I believe planaria will attack eggs not protected by a parent first and foremost, but cannot rule out that they will try to attack guarded eggs as well.

A better approach might be to get an applesnail and let it eat the planaria instead of disturbing the enviroment as much as you do now.

Your fish has been fighting, but it doesn't look very serious, although more than the harmelss tailslapping. With 11 fish you can afford to split the group up, depending on the decor 11 fish should be able to live peacefully in your tank, but it looks from your pictures that you do not have a lot of decor..? I keep 8 in a 120L without problem, but again, layout is very important to provdie hidingplaces and territories.

In short Get something that eats your planaria instead of scrubbing the tank down every week as this definately would stress your fish.

If you're not sure of the sex of some of them, take the opportunity now and get good overhead shots of them and see if somebody here can help you. The important thing now is not to stress your fish much more than they already are though!

Hope this helps

[Andrew C]

Thanks All
Been growing on Bristlenose fry and Dicrossus fry in two 4ft tanks, so going to move all the fry from these two tanks into the 6ft tank and split the zebras into two groups of five in the 4ft tanks.

McEve, the zebras were fine in the 6ft tank for long enough and did have plenty of caves until i found planaria in the tank and starting cutting back on the caves each week to help make it easier to find the planaria when cleaning the tank.
The worse bit is, the zebras loved the live white worms, it is the only food i found that had some of my zebras feeding on, as soon as it was put in the tank.
The white worms were thrown out a while ago.

Never thought of a snail to eat planaria, it could probably find the planaria better, as i could only find one fish that is said to eat them and that is the Paradise Fish.
But planaria hide in any nook and crany in the tank during the day and come out more at night, so i couldn't see a fish helping much.

Best just to move the fish around around and use the 6ft tank just now for growing on fry, it'll be better for the fish and me.
Will take some pictures when moving them to try and sex them all.

[Barbie]

You'll also be able to get rid of the planaria if you stop leaving any uneaten food in the tank. In that case, snails like MTS wouldn't be a bad idea, as they clean up any leftovers. I would definitely stop taking their caves out for any reason. You're working against yourself in the attempts to spawn them, IMO. Your other option is to put a divider or two in the tank to keep the groups separated. I know of a couple people that have had spawns from two males at the same time in a big enough tank. I definitely wouldn't take any back!

Your males are definitely showing the signs that they've been dragging each other out of caves. It might be helping them figure out their pecking order, but I'm sure you don't want things to escalate. These guys really ARE willing and able to kill each other if they're mad enough, believe me!

On a side note, bettas don't mind the warmth of zebra water and will also eat planaria .

Barbie

[thebuddy]

you can keep bettas with zebras? do they eat fry?

[Andrew C]

Barbie
It's not the zebras i was going to take to my lfs, it was the Bristlenose and Dicrossus fry.
Though, only a few of them are big enough to take to the lfs yet, most are still too small, so its best to change tanks with zebras, would feel better getting them out of the tank that the planaria are in.

Like the idea of using Bettas for eating left overs and other things, would probably get females over the males even though they're much less colourful, females just look hardier than males.

As Buddy said, would they not be a danger to newly hatched fry ?

[Andrew C]

This was the set up, used to have more slate structures, slate propped up on one side, but always found planaria along the top underside of them, which was a tight crevice for them to hide in when the tank lights were on;

[Barbie]

They probably would be a danger to new fry, yes. You can easily put them in a hanging breeder trap indefinitely though, if you have fry that you need to keep protected. It will be a much more stable environment than most people keep them in and they actually like the warmer water. I keep my zebra breeders in species tanks, but I'm not fighting a worm problem or I'd consider adding a natural predator for them, definitely.

Barbie

[Andrew C]

Flipping live food.
When i cleaned out the gravel i had in the two 4ft tanks, guess what i find on the bottom, planaria
Forgot i used to feed white worms to all my fish, so the other two - 2ft tanks i haven't touched, will have planaria as well !
Don't get me wrong, my tanks aren't riddled with them, took about a dozen out of one 4ft tank, and 4 or 5 out of the other.
The 6ft tank was the worse, i knew something was there but didn't know what they were, or how they can multiply, removed around 20 to 30 from it when i found out what they were !

Will be getting a female betta for each tank this weekend !

[Andrew C]

Didn't get any fish for eating planaria as i prefer to keep the zebras on there own.

Cutback well on the feeding, though if i do find a cave unoccupied when cleaning it gets a good scrubbing, and am only finding the odd planaria now, hopefully cutting back on the overfeeding will get rid of them all together.

[Andrew C]

An update on this topic, found it while searching for something else.

First off, i lost two zebras, one in each of the four foot tanks that they were moved to, while trying Esha Snail Control to try to get rid of the beasties.
It said it was harmless to fish and filter bacteria, and had read that it had got rid of planarians in some other peoples tanks, but did not find this the case, two of my zebras reacted badly to it, and after large water changes in each tank, thankfully the remaining eight survived fine.
The box or bottle did not have any ingredients in it and i could not find it's ingredients when searching for it on the internet, so do not know it's ingredients.

Secondly, they were not Planarians, but actually Copepods, which i finally did get rid of.
Luckily i was moving my fish to my hut and had fishless cycled the tanks in the hut so that i could move the fish without using anything from my current tanks.
Any caves and filter material from these tanks was thrown out and the tanks and filters were left to dry out over a few weeks, since Copepods live in water or somewhere at least damp, i couldn't see them surviving without water and they didn't.
I had the two 4ft tanks set up in the hut for a while and there was never any trace of copepods, even when i stripped them down again to get the right tanks in place.

I had been talking with another fish keeper and after describing the critters in my tank while using a magnifying glass, he sent me this picture saying what they were and how they moved, and it definetly looked like them, and they moved how he had described them.
Harpacticoid Copepod !
He told me they are harmless and that they can be found in lots of tanks in the background, never usually multiplying in tanks, some fish will eat them, but not in large numbers, and can even be introduced to a tank through live plants.


This was the stage they were getting to each day, after moving the zebras.




They are the white dots on the bottom.


I kept the 6ft tank going a bit longer without any fish in it to see if i could find anything that killed them, but could not find anything that would kill them 100%.
As the copepods were multiplying too well in the two external cannister filters on this tank, and must have been thriving on the protein rich homemade food i was feeding my zebras.

The big pile (4 inchs in size) is dead & alive copepods and also gunk from the cleaned out external filter, after treating the tank with lots of salt and three bottles of Hydrogen Peroxide solution.
***No Fish Were Present***


They are the small white dots around the edge of the slate i used to cover my white worms with, this picture is when i first realised i was introducing something extra into my tanks while feeding live white worms.


It has been a costly experience for me and the worst bit is that, the zebras loved the live white worms, but beware of live food and clean it well before using it, so not to introduce anything unwanted into your tank.