Everything you ever wanted to say about "Zebra luvin", but didn't because you thought everyone would take the mickey! Plus general topics for discussion including everything from what you feed them to your personal experiences.
My zebs are very shy. I rarely get more than a glimpse of a tail or a blur as they whoosh! into hiding. But last night, I was doing some things in their tank and I guess I disturbed them a bit, and one came out to have a look. I was doing a gravel vac and would it move out the way? Would it heck. I had to clean around it. It just sat there, bold as brass, waited until I was done and THEN slinked back into hiding. Daft things!
But I got a treat later when I fed them. I turned the tank lights out but the room light was still on. And they both came out and the one that I never see came right up and had a look at me. They were both eating well (McEve's recipe food!) and seemed very happy and were having a good look around the tank, despite my face staring right back at them. Their fins are all healed from the nipping they got in the LFS and the blue on the dorsal fin is showing now too. Just lovely!
I'll do my best, but they really are little devils. That said, they will be moving into their own tank soon and I will definitely take some more pics while I have them out. Would like to try and get some shots from the side so you guys can see if their whiskers give any indication to their sex, but I don't really have anything that I could that in. Will have to have a think...
I'm glad to hear that your zebras are doing well and that their nipped fins are healing up. Zebras can be real characters at times, just the other day while I was watching my lot at feeding time I noticed two juveniles having a bit of a tussle. They were smacking each other in the face with their tails, nothing too violent, one eventually got fed up and swam off. Only to return about 5 seconds later to continue where he had left off .
You may want to try having less tank decor, I have found that doing this has encouraged my zebras to come out more.
I've seen my Ancistrus's (what's the plural of Ancistrus?) do the tail smacking thing before. It's hilarious. Mind you, if I had such a tail, I'd be tempted to do the same thing!
When they're moved to their own tank, the decor will be a lot more bare, but they're in one of my existing tanks at the moment, so we all just have to put up with it for now!
Plural for Ancistrus hmmmmmm, that's a good one. The genus is Ancistrus, I guess this would be the plural. I've seen singular species referred to as Ancistrinae . Mind you Ancistri or as I've seen on one german site Ancistrugen are two other possibilities .
The tail slapping thing is actually a sign of aggression and can be quite violent in adult zebras sometimes leading to physical damage.
I had two ancistruses/ugen/i/ae (choose your own suffix ). I had one big one and one little one. It was the big one that used to slap the little one with his tail if he got too close. That particular ancistrus became more and more aggressive and I had to sell him back to the shop eventually. He used to claim all food as his own and would smack any fish that tried to get near. He would zip across the tank like lightning and the next thing you'd see was an explosion of sand where he'd struck and fish just scattering in every direction...
On the whole my two Ancistrus are well behaved, sounds like that male you had was a right character. I have noticed that they can get pretty set in their ways. My male is really placid and gets bullied by the female sometimes, she likes to evict him from his resting spot. He just seems to be too docile which is why they probably haven't bred yet . The female shows more aggression than he does, if she pops out for a bite to eat and some other catfish has taken her favourite spot she will quite forcibly move the squatter on .
I think that nutter one I had was a female. It was quite big, over 3", and only had short, even bristles around the nose. None of those fantastic long ones you see on the males. She must have been one moody mama!
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. The female shows more aggression than he does, if she pops out for a bite to eat and some other catfish has taken her favourite spot she will quite forcibly move the squatter on 
