it's the end of a long day of work and i'm staring at the most
beautiful little fish ever just covered in shimmering dots and bright orange fins
should be totally relaxing watching them swimming back and forth until
all of a sudden i notice some of them are missing giant chunks out of their tails
what nobody ever told me that celestial danios will bite each other what's going on
hi my name is irene with girl talks fish here with practical tips for busy fish keepers like
you and i find it so frustrating when i do all this research on the perfect fish to bring home
that should be completely safe and peaceful for community tank right and then you take it home
and you find it's totally fin nipping all of its roommates so stressful both for the fish and for
me so i decided to pull you guys in my computing post to find out your real world experiences with
fin nippers and after telling the results here they are in reverse order from least to most bitey
fyi because my channel focuses mostly on smaller tanks and fish i did filter out all the big fish
that just flat out are trying to eat other smaller fish starting at number seven on our list are
crabs and crayfish which i think are really really cool looking but they are opportunistic feeders so
they'll probably try to eat anything dead or alive that they can get their pinchers on for fiddler
crabs arima said that their fiddlers would pinch their plecos and other fish versus crazy candy
said they flat out kill her neon tetras so my i guess the solution would be keep them in a species
only set up just because they are brackish and semi-aquatic so it is a very specialized
environment but some people have mentioned keeping bumblebee gobies with them another crustacean that
was mentioned was mexican dwarf crayfish which i think are a little less aggressive compared
to fiddlers jack said that uh the reason why his crayfish was attacking other fish is because they
kept trying to go into his cave and he was not happy about that so i think the solution in that
case is just get a bigger setup and then hopefully he can have his own little territory to defend
number six on the list is pea puffers these are a one inch long little blimp that likes to
eat snails and blood worms they are considered semi-aggressive but some people have said that
they recommend keeping them in a small group or a shoal so that they can have more of their
little friends to hang out with in a species only set up given as long as you have like the right
ratio of one male to maybe two to three females or maybe just one male period because they can
kind of get a little crazy larry said don't keep them with any long finned fish like angelfish
and then marigold said that if you have a bigger tank size that may help with some of
the territorial disputes she also says something interesting about if you feed the dwarf puffers
enough sometimes it'll leave your dwarf shrimp alone which i thought that was kind of interesting
um i don't know if you guys know in the past i used to have a dwarf puffer puffer named jinx and
she actually had one roommate it was a crystal red shrimp if you could believe it and this thing was
not afraid of jinx at all it would just walk out in the middle of the tank do its thing they left
each other alone so again bottom line it really does depend on the individual personality of your
puffer or whatever species it is number five on the list was kind of a surprise for me which is
live bears specifically guppies and mollies people constantly said that they would terrorize their
other fish and nip them and i don't know i guess my guess best guess why they're nippy might be
because live bears in general tend to be pretty voracious eaters and so maybe they're just kind
of nipping on things to check to see if they can eat them or maybe the aggression comes from their
constant need to breed i don't know choto merman macaroni says that they wouldn't recommend keeping
them with long finned fish like bettas which i think is kind of funny because normally you think
of a betta would be the one attacking the long finned guppies right but apparently can go the
other way and then several people recommended keeping again the right ratio of one male to
three females just to keep the males occupied but crazy candy said that she had the right ratio but
still had to separate out her two most aggressive mollies they just wouldn't leave the other fish
alone number four on this list are tetras and danios and the biggest offender in this list are
serpae tetras person after person had kept commenting and mentioning the survey tetras
but nobody ever offered any solutions in fact a lot of people mentioned that they just ended up
returning them to the pet store the second biggest offender on this list would be zebra
danios and i think the reason why is because they're very fast therefore they have very fast
metabolisms and therefore they're very hungry so like the livebearers i think they're just probably
nibbling on everything they can to see if it's food including your betta's tail
other fish that were mentioned included black skirt tetras as well as neon tetras
so i think the solution for this group would be keep a larger number of fish in their school me
remember that a school means that they have to be all of the same species as well as if it's
a problem keep them away from long finned fish as usual number three on our list would be a gouramis
and i'm saying all types you know anything from dwarf gouramis to three spot pearl and even the
tiny innocent sparkling gourami has been mentioned in the comments by you guys and i think it really
depends on the species as well as the personality of the individual fish so you guys know about my
love hate relationship with dwarf gouramis i've definitely had totally evil ones like peyton
manning that had to be removed versus unicron over here my dwarf blue powder blue dwarf gourami he's
been doing great in a community setting not to say that he doesn't absolutely chase the platies
but i think i just paired him with the right tank mates and so the platies are fast enough and they
don't seem to mind being chased so that's great i would say for solutions this really depends
on the species so do your research but either just get one gourami or you might have to get
three or more just because i've had situations in the past where even honey gouramis which are
supposedly the most peaceful gouramis out there when i had two in that case the bigger female did
bully the smaller one but as soon as i had three honey gouramis together they were completely fine
however if they still can't play nice with each other you're gonna have to either remove
them from your community tank or consider re-homing them all together number two on
the list which shouldn't be a surprise are betta fish and so this is an interesting one because
bettas are solitary creatures so in general you can't get like more of them to disperse
the aggression among themselves and i know some of you might say in the comments like what about
the all-female betta fish sororities and um in general i haven't had personal experience
with them but from the people i've talked to have tried them it usually ends in a failure
so unless you are a super experienced betta fish guru i usually don't recommend female sororities
another unique thing about betta fish is they are the only fish on this list that tends to bite
their own tail so i don't know whether it's from boredom or like genetic mental issues but i have
a whole video over here on different things you can try to help your betta fish get his mind off
of that tail as for the solution i think again every betta fish has a very different personality
so if you find that your betta is just too aggressive you may have to just remove him from
the community tank he was in like i did with sonic and give him his own bachelor pad or you could try
switching up the tank mates a little bit sometimes bettas have like a real thing for
let's say guppy fish but they would be totally fine with corydoras down below or sometimes
it's vice versa so it totally depends but it might be worth something to experiment with
and the number one reigning champion of all vendors is tiger barbs oh my goodness who knew
they seem to attack everything from smaller neon tetras to larger cichlids like angelfish
so most people say that the more tiger barbs you have they will tend to keep that aggression among
themselves and kind of pick on each other but just remember that cory from aquarium cop had an
800 gallon aquarium filled with tiger barbs and even he said that they were super rambunctious
um basically think of them like a gang of rowdy teenagers where not only will they
kind of fight among themselves but they might pick on anybody who happens to cross their path
the solution would be of course don't keep them with any slow
timid or long finned fish consider other tank mates that are also really fast swimmers maybe
also semi-aggressive like botia loaches worst-case scenario though you might have to just make a
species only set up for them but if you still can't handle their bickering among each other
though you might have to consider re-homing them because that is part of their nature after reading
all your stories i think my main mistake with my celestial pearl danios is i started
off with seven but then one of them died so then i only had six which is often considered the bare
minimum for a schooling fish and i think i really if i had boosted up the numbers to like 9 or 12
that aggression would have dispersed a lot more i wouldn't see as much men nipping and then i could
go back to just relaxing and enjoying watching their little antics after a long day of work
now if you're worried about fish nipping or eating your plants then you might want to check out this
video over here on the top fish to avoid in a planted aquarium just a heads up in that video i
am wearing sunglasses the whole time because back in the day i was concerned about privacy issues
take time to enjoy your aquariums and i'll see in the next video