Beware

Picked up a couple of paradise fish during the week. Great looking finnage and awesome colours. Anyhow, they were in the tank two days and in that time they bit in half two of my harlequin rasporas and (this really pi**ed me off) one of them plucked the eye out of one of my little panda corys. Normally I would offer up problem fish for rehousing or bring them back to the lfs, but with the bad weather it made more sense ( and was far more gratifying) to feed them to my Oscars. I had done a bit of research on them and thought they were peacefull but these guys can turn the same way some gouramis do and become terrors in a tank so dont believe everything you read. Just thought I would share this to anyone thinking of picking some up.

Jay

jay
i know this is an old post but i was just wondering what size were the fish and whatr size tank etc as i got 2 of these fish the other week and have had no probs yet mine are in with angels killies corys gouramis and female endlers in a 600 litre tank
thanks john

john wrote:

jay
i know this is an old post but i was just wondering what size were the fish and whatr size tank etc as i got 2 of these fish the other week and have had no probs yet mine are in with angels killies corys gouramis and female endlers in a 600 litre tank
thanks john

Hi John,

These were about 3". It wasnt long before the aggression began to be a problem so looks like you have a couple there with a peacful temperment. Best of luck with them, very nice fish.

Your lack of proper research resulted in unnecessary cruelty and carnage. You don't have to trawl too far before you hear of paradise fish eating tank mates. I had thought it was fairly common knowlage.
I've heard more than a few people referring to it as "the real eye biter".
less than five minutes of 'googling' provided these three links with information on paradise fish aggression......
Paradise fish Wiki
Paradise fish aquaria hobby
Paradise fish articla

You alone are responsible for the death of your rasboras' and the injury to your cory.
The paradise fish were doing nothing more than what comes naturally to them. Feeding your Paradise fish to your Oscars in my opinion was a histrionic, emotionally charged knee-jerk reaction and a waste of beautiful fish. you need to mature some before you should be granted guardianship over anymore animals!

A knee jerk reaction mabey. Personally I prefer to learn from experience and not take everything on google to be fact. However, the fact that this post has resulted in upsetting a troll like yourself so much has made it all the more satisfying .

Jay

Lads ease up. No need for personal attacks here.
Gavin

Funny thing is I agree, it was a mistake and I learned from it. This was over a year ago and I wouldnt do it again, those of you who know me, know this. When cr@p like this is aimed at me however, Im done pulling punches here.

Jay

I know what you mean,yes we learn from mistakes,and of course its none of our intentions to cause any cruelty to our fish. I know you wouldnt of done this again Jay,so lesson very much learned as they.
What works for one person isnt always what another person might do initially.

Adam,alot of these posts are quite old and the lads have learned from it etc.. Jay is well able to mind fish and Id be bhappy for him to mind my fish if ever needed.
Phew!! JohnH, I dont envy your job mate!!
Gavin

I am afraid I must agree with Jay, why such an abrasive manner? totally unnecessary.

Kev.

Well we're all entitled to our own opinions. Little strange though that you find my reply to this topic "abrasive"...and "totally unnecessary" Yet causing cruelty in a churlish fit of anger provoked no reaction from forum members?

I'm truly suprised that a reply similar to mine hadn't been posted before!
I don't feel my reply was abrasive. To the point, yes. Definately not unecessary. Inexperienced fish keepers could read topics like this one and think this kind of irresponsible behaviour is acceptable!

While Im certainly no expert, I would suggest, before you decide someone is inexperienced, that you read through all of my posts, be they replies or questions, and not make your mind up after reading one thats over a year old. Your suprised someone has not already talked me down over this?? If your looking for a forum thats somewhere to go for a bitching session, then your in the wrong place.

Jay

We are all in possession of Opinions, true, but most of us think before we post. We also wait a little to get to know the members of the forum before we go all out in accusatory mode. You don't think it's abrasive because you are not at the receiving end of your diatribe.

It behooves you to take a while to search the Forum to see people's attitudes and feelings toward cruelty ie, youtube feeding of live Animals to Piranha and our detestation of Goldfish in Bowls.

These topics ALWAYS evoke reaction from members but your attack, and that is what it is, is akin to someone joining a movie half way through, you don't know the story and go on to write a review that will give the reader a totally obtuse view of reality. It is also pretty egotistical of someone who has only joined the Forum to start hacking at people.

Kev.

Paradise fish can be kept with other fish... Just depends on the individual fish. Iv kept a paradise fish with other fish and no problem.

Have you any experience with paradise fish yourself ArmaghAdam....? Stuff you find on the net is nothing compared to experience. No need to be pretty much saying that jay 'murdered' his fish when you don't know enough about paradise fish!

Paradise fish are similar to betta's and gourami's.... all Anabantoidei. (JohnH already explained this )
Some betta's will kill other fish... some wont. Same with gourami's and same with paradise fish.

It was just bad luck.... and jay did remove them when he saw they were aggressive. The Oscars aint complaining.

As far as live feeding goes you cant really pick and choose which fish are ok and which are not, I know i guy in malaysia who uses gourami's as bait and feeds them to his fish as they are native fish. In my opinion live feeding is fine as long as the fish doesn't suffer and it's actually good for the fish eating em. Personally the only fish i feed are guppy fry.

your entilted to your own opinion but your post was an attack on viperbot and i hope you see now why other members don't share your opinion.

The reason i pasted links was purely to illustrate the ease with which info on the nature and compatability of paradise fish can be accessed. I was by no means suggesting that Paradise fish are absolutely incompatible to community aquarium life, or that google is a substitute for experience meerly that nobody has the excuse of ignorance.

My first post was not an attack nor an accusation. Castigation, perhaps.
As i mentioned before, inexperienced fishkeepers browsing this forum read what they assume to be seasoned hobbyists firstly adding potentially aggressive fish to a settled community tank then when the unfortunate but entirely natural aggression takes place; The fish keeper in what appears to be a state of high emotion feeds them to predatory fish as if to punish them.
What compelled me most of all to reply was that his admition to such irrational malice went completely uncontested.

What kind of message does that convey to fledgling fishkeepers?
More than simply promoting fishkeeping i think we should endevor to champion responsible fishkeeping.
I think the sentiment displayed in the original post in this thread fall's a long way short of that.

stretnik wrote:

It is also pretty egotistical of someone who has only joined the Forum to start hacking at people.

Kev.

I dont see the correlation between length of time spent on any given forum and the validity of a point of view. Besides, I wasn't hacking at 'people' i was contesting what i considered to be an inappropriate post. Regardless of the author's rank or number of previous posts.

Closing rank's on the "newbie" doesn't make me wrong either.

ArmaghAdam, welcome to our forum. I am no saint but one of the core principles of this forum is to "attack the post, not the poster". It is also worth bearing in mind that most of the forum members know each other face to face, which is why you won't see too many so-called "keyboard warriors" on here. If you were infront of Jay in person I doubt you would say "you need to mature some before you should be granted guardianship over anymore animals!" ... I believe Jay is a father which makes saying something like that seem even more insulting and misguided as far as I am concerned.
Jay made a boo boo a long time ago, he realises that now.
However, I look forward to reading some of your contributions about fancy goldfish, a subject that is overlooked by most of us here.

Here is a thread from a few weeks ago, you could look at it as an example. The guy was shown in a respectful and restrained manner that what he was doing was wrong. Everyone got their point across without causing offence and I believe that the poster admirably learned from his mistake. That seems to work better... Mbu puffer

we all make mistakes when buying fish and learn from them,but the only thing i disagree with is feeding the fish to the oscar,which is not needed but we all learn.So i can see where armaghadam is coming from

Viperbot wrote:

While Im certainly no expert, I would suggest, before you decide someone is inexperienced, that you read through all of my posts, be they replies or questions, and not make your mind up after reading one thats over a year old. Your suprised someone has not already talked me down over this?? If your looking for a forum thats somewhere to go for a bitching session, then your in the wrong place.

Jay

I didn't suggest that you were inexperienced, i said people who are inexperienced could read your post.

I wasn't trying to 'talk you down'. I was adding a voice of dissent to irresponsible animal husbandry.

It is ridiculous to infer that i'm looking for a 'bitching session' because i dispute what i see as capricious behaviour and a reckless forum post.

welcome to the forum armaghadam. your reply to the original viporbot post was certainly scolding and made for uncomfortable reading and unsurprisingly provoked an equally strong response from some members.
however, i would strongly agree that paradise fish are unsuitable community fish due to nippy behavior and preffered water temperature. so we can help by advising keepers (softly) to avoid certain species and maybe shopkeepers could advise potential purchasers of the risks in adding these type of fish to a normal type of community setup.

derek wrote:

welcome to the forum armaghadam. your reply to the original viporbot post was certainly scolding and made for uncomfortable reading and unsurprisingly provoked an equally strong response from some members.
however, i would strongly agree that paradise fish are unsuitable community fish due to nippy behavior and preffered water temperature. so we can help by advising keepers (softly) to avoid certain species and maybe shopkeepers could advise potential purchasers of the risks in adding these type of fish to a normal type of community setup.

In hindsight i think your right. a less gun-hoe and more humble attitude from myself would have been better suited.

I can see where your coming from adam but I don't think you went about it the right way. you may not consider it an attack but you did make it personal.

Jay posted his mistake to warn people that paradise fish can be aggressive.... Any newcomer wouldn't go off and buy a paradise fish after reading it.

I agree live feeding shouldnt be promoted on a forum as most of the time people feed large fish and mice that suffer ect.... Just like i wouldnt post if i had an overstocked tank which was maintained through experience...

Anyways welcome to the forum! I think i have two fancy goldfish (Long tails) ! saved em from a 20L tank.

Edit:

In hindsight i think your right. a less gun-hoe and more humble attitude from myself would have been better suited.

Yups! anyways im sure this will all be forgotten about.

welcome adam i hope to see more posts from u as i think u love fish and will look forward to more posts and pics on ur setups

You join the Forum and the first thing you do after introducing yourself is immediately castigate someone you have no knowledge of, and although the individual, and by no means does he need to apologise or defend himself to you, has explained it was a long time ago and that he and others have learned by his /their mistakes , you continue dissecting everything that has been posted since.

Not once have you admitted that you might have been a smidgen over the top in your vitriol and while I am at it, Admission is the word you are looking for, there is no word "admition"in the Dictionary, to my knowledge.

Whether you are a Newcomer or an old Hand matters not a jot, I treat everyone with respect, something I expect in return, but to see someone just introduce themselves, and then go for the Jugular in their next Post really surprised me and a lot of people, you come off all holier than thou and that just isn't on. Your terminology is extremely angry, you seem to have issues that need to be dealt with, by yourself, off the forum.


Can we expect you to go through the Forum Sherlocking your way to all the unsatisfactory, in your opinion, Posts so you can don the Wig and cast judgement on all and sundry?

Gun-hoe ? Surely you mean gung-ho.

Kev.

[quote="stretnik" post=91990Not once have you adnmitted that you might have been a smidgen over the top in your vitriol and while I am at it, Admission is the word you are looking for, there is no word "admition"in the Dictionary, to my knowledge.

Kev.[/quote]

dont think adnmitted is there either kev.

BURNED ! Ta for the Heads-up. !!

Kev.