Hi, I wrote a while back when I was considering getting my candy stripes, and again posted with pics of the two that I got, for possible sexing. Which, as is often the case with fish like these, was sort of established as it being a chance of being a male/female pair. Anyway, they are doing great, and I love them to bits. They are real characters and a great addition to the tank.
Lately, however, I have noticed some behaviour which I was curious about. Seeing as I'm unsure as to their sexes, I don't really know how to interpret it. From their appearance, one is definitely bulkier than the other, though neither have the spiky bits running down their sides at the moment. Normally, though I wouldn't say they were particularly aggressive towards each other, there is often a dominant one around food. Apart from that, they seem pretty cool towards each other, even if they do normally spend most of their time in different parts of the tank. When they do meet, one might shoo the other away, but it's not very harsh. This week however, I saw them doing a few odd things and wondered whether it's just normal territorial behaviour, or whether something else is going on. One is they were both underneath a sort of "overhang" of a piece of bogwood. When the moss is out of control, that forms a nice "cave" of sorts. It's exposed at the moment and as such I noticed they were both in there and seemed to be sort of swirling around each other before they both finally swam out. Not long after, one was laying on a long piece of bogwood out in the open, and the other came and sat right on top of it, as if stacked like plastic chairs. Heads and tails facing the same way. The bottom one eventually swam off. It seems to be the bulkier of the two that does this dominating type stuff.
When I put a courgette in there, they both happily eat at the same time, so they obviously aren't completely intolerant of each other.
Anybody have any ideas what's going on? Or is this just normal and I've never noticed it before?
