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I don't even know if it could have been avoided - I am totally speechless. My zebbies were all fine, happily plodding along and eating tons of food. Last time I checked was yesterday morning. Last night I fed but as I was tired and flu-ish I didn't stay to observe, as I usually do. This morning I missed too - was late up and had to rush to work. On my return I went to feed and saw one of my beautiful males dead! He was in between some rocks and his cave, facing inwards (don't know if he was fending someone off or he got out of his cave to go in the rockery to hide. He has a bite mark you can see very clearly in one of the pictures, its a deep round hole at the top of his body near the bottom part of his pectoral fin - then the redening spreads around it. His head is a bit bruised over one eye. From a ventral view I can only see a bit of reddening/bruising under his pectoral fin. That's it. Otherwise untouched.
It seems to me there was a fight, but I can't think of anybody challenging him!! My other male zebra "lives" far away, at the centre of the tank! The other plecs don't fight with the zebras, never!
I am gutted .. he's been in the tank since he was in "nappies" and was now 8 cm SL. I am posting the pictures in case somebody has an idea of what could have happened and when it could have happened .. did he die as a result of a wound inflicted earlier (say a couple of days ago) which got infected or was it a straight fight last night / this morning? The wound looks like a hole with bruising/infection?? around it - but its quite deep. Could he have hurt himself? Any ideas will help as I need to check what is happening, if all of a sudden there are fights in the tank!



Thanks

now I am kinda new but is it possible your rocks shifted gouging him like that?

Hi,
no - no way. The area he was in is exactly as it was and it's dense with a number of pieces of slate so there are lots of cracks and crevices. It can't move. The only possibility I was considering is whether he could have hurt himself on a corner or something - not that there is any sharp edges there!
Thanks

Thanks Barbie,
It was a male zebra who attacked your fry, right? I am asking because I was considering who could have attacked mine. A couple of weeks ago, in that very same area, I found one of my smaller pictus cats (still a very respectable fish at 6" TL) trapped and bitten to death. Surprisingly it happened over the weekend again. I suspected my biggest pictus who has now decided to move in the area.
The marks on the pictus were at the same spots as these marks, a deep bite near the shoulder area and some bruising on the head. Could it be the same aggressor do you think or is the "tactic" quite common amongst fighting fish?
Thanks

This looks very similar to way my male died a few years ago. Don't forget these fish do have very sharp teeth to deal with the meaty foods they feed on, so they can probably do a lot of damage in a dispute!

i have my tank at about eye level right next to my favourite chair in the sitting room & have quite often see the disputes between the male's in my breeding group, they seam to use the gill cover spines as a weapon, they can stick them out at a right angles to their head and try and stab the other male, there has been some nasty injures in the past, quite similar to this one.

Thanks guys .. I will seperate the other males then - looks like for some reason someone got aggressive out of the blue. I was about to isolate the big pictus as he was the main suspect .....

so to reserect this thread
are males alwas this agressive i dont want to mow 5 plus lawns possible a months worth of work to have the pleco killed by an agressive tankmate should i go for 1 male 5 females?

Putting more than one male in a tank you always take a risk IMO. Some people recommend putting two males - the competition between them apparently gets the females to chose who they will spawn with.
In my case, these two males have co-existed happily for over 3 years. I have had two more incidents in the tank and I tend to believe that as the fish were growing they started competing for space. This has never been the case before. There has always been plenty of space and plenty of food in the tank, specifically to avoid "confrontations".

should i go for 1 male 5 females?

That would be alot of girls for one guy to handle
IMO a trio would be best.