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#Post#: 407--------------------------------------------------
My Monster: 14" and growing Ornate Bichir and her Mini
Monsters
DIR By: Thecrazyfishlady
Date: September 23, 2014, 1:50 pm
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She truly is a monster because she's determined to be the only
major predator in her tank. Lives in a 125 gallon mostly by
herself, save for the school of Peters Elephant Nose that
co-exist along side it.
[URL=
HTML http://s3.photobucket.com/user/Sanguvixen/media/DSCF7299_zpsef38a9b3.jpg.html][IMG]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y98/Sanguvixen/DSCF7299_zpsef38a9b3.jpg[/img][/URL]
Is a picture of the Ornate.
[URL=
HTML http://s3.photobucket.com/user/Sanguvixen/media/IMG_20140619_155536_268_zps2a2db15d.jpg.html][IMG]http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y98/Sanguvixen/IMG_20140619_155536_268_zps2a2db15d.jpg[/img][/URL]
This was the first Mini Monster aka Peters Elephant Nose. You
don't see it but inside that hide an ornate bichir lurks, and
the elephant clearly doesn't care.
Queen started out as a 5" live caught that I stumbled across at
a local pet-store. Very early on I realized that no one on staff
actually knew anything about her species. I had been researching
the Ornate for a long time and was quite upset to see one pop up
at a pet-store with clueless employees. That meant they wouldn't
be able to properly inform the person looking to buy her.
She was stuck in a 10 gallon tank with a sponge filter and no
place to hide. So she had hid her face as best as she could in
the area under the sponge and was clearly stressed out. Even
though there was a line of people looking to buy her I managed
to sneak in by grabbing an employee and basically said "I want a
price and I want you to per her in a bag for me because I'm
taking her home". I walked away with this girl for 20 USD (yeah
they looked at the cost at the similar size senegalus and stuck
that price on there) and this has been the most challenging
animal I have ever kept or had to work with (and I have
experience with exotics beyond the pet trade).
The first thing she did when she went into my large tank at the
time was hide. After that she established half the tank as hers
and the other half is where the senegalus bichirs were allowed
to be(there were two of them). As she began to grow so did her
attitude. She was difficult to feed sometimes due to her
shyness, and as she grew so did her aggression. I've been told
if you grow them up together that usually they put up with their
tank-mates. While that has held true for things like my
senegalus, and I hope will hold true for the Delhezi and the
Teugelsi (they all are getting along very well currently), this
did not hold true for the Ornate. Perhaps if she were captive
bred things would be different. I don't really know. She got so
bad against her tank mates that I knew for her sake and theirs
that she needed to go live by herself.
She went to live by herself in a 75 gallon until I could get a
new tank set up just for her. In the 75 she would go into random
fits when I try to maintain the tank. She'd come charging out in
full threat posture and on those days I'd just stop, and wait
until she was in a better mood. It was during this time frame
that I ran across my very first Peters Elephant Nose. Found it
at pet-smart of all things and they were not even sure why it
got shipped to them as they never ordered it! He was so perky
and happy that I had to bring him home. He went in to live with
my Rope-fish and became the terror of the tank. He was literally
a mini-monster. He would harass and chase anything and
everything. This was not in his species description! Sure it's
stated they are that way towards each other...but towards other
fish?
So this mini-monster went to go live with Queen. The strangest
thing happened during observation after putting him in there.
Queen bolted out to see what this intruder was, and this little
fish stared down this big fish, and the big fish backed away and
went back to her hide. Within the same day the elephant nose
made himself at home inside the Ornate's hide. The ornate
actually backed up a bit to let the fish have more room.
This blew my mind for the longest time. After all this time the
Ornate is willing to share with this?
Moving on I worked hard with the help of friends to rebuild a
stand for a craigslist find, and when we finally had it up and
running the Ornate went into this 125 gallon (6 feet long, 18"
wide) to be by herself. It's not ideal but it's the best I can
manage. I have weight limit on my floor. In the future once I
get certain things done I want to save up and have a custom tank
built (thinking acrylic) that sacrifices tallness to increase
width. This way I can still stay within my weight range but the
Ornate will have more space to turn around should she hit that
full 21" that some individuals have hit in captivity. If she
grows that that size, she is getting a larger tank. But for now
this space is good enough for her.
The mini monster changed. He went into this big tank and became
despondent. He stopped eating. I couldn't figure out why but
some nagging thing in my head kept telling me that this is
probably a social fish. I looked back at all his previous
behavior, and taking into consideration his intelligence. Then I
found a video where someone kept 10 of these in a 600 gallon
tank.
I thought that this 6 foot tank would be plenty of space to try
a small school. The local pet shop I work at managed to get in
enough healthy ones and that's how the shoal started. It's been
amazing to see the difference. They act not unlike Yoyo Loaches
in that they develop a complex hierarchy, and definately benefit
from the school. Furthermore I have seen a really unusual
behavior that I'd like to share.
It started with Queen. When they were turned into a shoal they
actually did this strange game where they would group up, and
one swims out to the now out and about predator. it does this
backwards swim motion as if offering it's tail to the predator's
head. When the predator doesn't do anything it races back to the
group, and a different member goes out and does the same thing.
Recently I tried to put a Red Fin Wolf into the tank (and Queen
said no and so now the Wolf lives in a tank by himself and is
very happy) and the group of elephant noses did the same thing!
They offer their tail to the predator, and when nothing happens
return to the group, and another one does the same thing. Then
individuals follow the predator around as though it's some form
of protection!
The best I can gather is that these smart fish probably use
predators that won't eat them as a safe place? Maybe that's a
survival thing where if you inhabit an area where a predator
active lives/hides you are less likely to be messed with or
eaten. This is during the attempt at putting the Red Fin in
there:
HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVTrEBtP0wU
This is not an up-to-date scape as when the Wolf went into a
tank by himself, the right end went through a revamp. But you
can seen the Ornate in here, in all her beauty. This tank is
still getting back into shape from fall out after moving the
wolf over. The very short period of time that I was not able to
be there watching 100 precent he fell ill. He recovered of
course, but the other fish got a low level infection of what he
had I had to experiment to try to find a good way to target the
illness without harming the Elephants, as they are very
sensitive to medication. The Ornate is still being fed on
medicated food as a precaution, though the Elephants seem mostly
okay (except for one).
I have other "Monsters" but this is by far my favorite (though I
love all my fish don't get me wrong).
#Post#: 529--------------------------------------------------
Re: My Monster: 14" and growing Ornate Bichir and her Mini
Monsters
DIR By: Stu4648
Date: September 25, 2014, 2:26 am
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Very lucky fish, you have them well looked after.
#Post#: 699--------------------------------------------------
Re: My Monster: 14" and growing Ornate Bichir and her Mini
Monsters
DIR By: Thecrazyfishlady
Date: September 26, 2014, 10:00 pm
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Thanks Stu.
Crossing my fingers and working with a lone Elephant Nose at the
pet-store that came in a bit thin. If he fattens up (he is
eating) he'll be coming home to join the Queen. Goodness knows
it won't hurt to have one more elephant in there.
#Post#: 1017--------------------------------------------------
Re: My Monster: 14" and growing Ornate Bichir and her Mini
Monsters
DIR By: UnderCoverBrother
Date: October 2, 2014, 8:05 am
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lovely set up and fish, i really liked the message at the end :)
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