Live pods in cowtown

[michika]

I've never had a sixline go crazy on me *knock on wood*, and mine has lived peacefully with my mandarin for a few years.

As for the pod piles they are just small piles of rubble that a sixline or wrasse can't get into. They can be rubble, they can just be really porous rock, etc.

[mark]

My 6-line not psycho either, actually find rather interesting how he cruises the current and goes throughout the rock. By competition meant that he's a pod eating machine.

At night with a flash light, tank used to crawl with pods, since getting the wrasse, have to look really hard now to find any.

Pod piles just areas of rubble or large pieces of crushed coral.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Do Centropyge also eat pods? I used to see tons of them at night (with a flashlight, like Mark), but not so much recently, after adding a Rusty Angelfish.

[Delphinus]

Centropyge's likely do reduce a pod population some. Pretty much anything eats pods really, it's just that mandarins are such ponderous eaters ("Hmmm shall I eat this or not? Hmmmm? Hmmmmm?") that usually if you offer them any prepared foods, that the other tankmates eat up all of it before they get enough of it. Thus, the the need for enough of a live population of pods that the mandarin can work on for other the 23 hours, 55 minutes that you're not there trying to directly feed them. Sometimes you get one that "figures it out" and eats food when offered but that's more an exception than the rule.

Catherine, Mark, I'm glad you trust your sixlines but I'm just posting my experience which in hindsight is a fairly well documented trait with these fish. I too thought "No, my mandarin is a nice fish" ... Lived peacefully with a mandarin for at least a full year after I moved the mandarin in from a different tank that I was taking down. There was no warning or any kind of lead-up to the event, otherwise I could have tried something. Anyhow, forewarned is forearmed. Sixlines are OK fish but they are known to become potentially troublesome as they age.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

....they are known to become potentially troublesome as they age.

I'm pretty sure I've heard my mom say the exact same thing...in reference to me.

[michika]

I'm sure you are right. I've heard tons of stories with sixlines becoming mean or agressive as they age. It sounds like its the rule and not the exception that this trait comes out later in their lives.

[digital-audiophile]

I've had my sixline for almost 2 years and I can attest that although he was a model tankmate for most of the time, it has been the past six months that he has turned into a pest. He now spends most of his day rushing up to his reflection at the side of the tank and flaring his fins. The rest of the time he spends picking on my clowns.

He is not a super agressive feeder though, he tends to wait for food to sink to the bottom of the tank before he pops out of the rocks to grab it.

[michika]

Makes me wonder if it has gone into some mating frenzy.

[digital-audiophile]

Perhaps I need to arrange a booty call for him

[michika]

:d <-- is supposed to be