Who Gives A Fish Forums

Re: Two-inch Bully

Nature's way is to establish a pecking order. It's not about removing the bully, they just need to work it out. Keeping at least 6 discus helps spread the aggression, so it's less noticeable. But someone's always at the bottom. That's just how it is.

I never mentioned pecking order - I'm well aware of that dynamic in fish behavior. What I'm trying to convey is extreme aggression, which is what I mean by a "bully". Removing the bully has consistently solved the problem for me.

In my experience with three groups of discus, each had a dominant fish at the top of the pecking order. However, none of those dominant fish were bullies. They only showed aggression when another fish tried to steal food from them or attacked their mate. But in two of those groups, and now this new one, I've also had a bully that terrorized the others. Removing the bully restored the natural pecking order.