My poor little Tetra!!!

I have 5 Neon Tetras in my 10G tank and they all seemed to be getting along fine. This morning I noticed that one of my Tetras, also happens to be the smallest of the group, has had his fins nipped really badly. Trouble is I think it is the other Neons doing the nipping.

Why would they do this? Also, it is slightly weird because the nipped fish still seems to be "happy" in that he is still feeding and still hanging around with the other Neons and is still getting food from the surface of the water.

Any thoughts?

Does it show any sign of ilness? To me, it is more likely that the dwarf gouramies did it. I've never heard of neon tetras nipping each other.


Unlimitedfishboy

I have had a look and there does not appear to be any signs of ick or any other illness. Also the way the fin has been left does not look like fin rot. It may be the Guorami's but I have noticed that one of the "healthy" neons has been chasing the fin nipped neon and going for its tail. Maybe I am imagining it I am not sure. I just hope the little fella is OK when I get home tonight. Will the fin grow back?

The Dwarf Guorami's seem more bothered with each other and don't seem to ever bother with the Neon's plus if it was the Guorami's would they not pick on all the Neon's rather than just one?

The gouramies as well as the other neons could pick on a certain fish, because it's smaller. If the nipping stops, the fin will certainly grow back, but this needs time of about a month to fully recover. You should feed that noen with healthy, nutritious foods which contains essential vitamins to repair damaged fins.

Good luck!!

Unlimitedfishboy

It may not be the guoramis, but I wouldn't rule them out. What I think the problem you have is that you don't have enough neons. I had this problem when I had 5 danios. What happens in schools of fish is that there are "hierarchies", so when there is a large school, the aggression towards each other is displaced on more than one fish, preventing one fish being picked on. In your case, the school is too small and so there is one fish that will get picked on. So to prevent it from happening, I would get more neons, but unfortunately, your tank might be to the stocking limit. But even 3 or 4 neons more would do the trick.
I hope this helps!

Thanks for all the great advice. I have been watching them quite closely latley and it does appear that there might be some infighting amongst the neons. I might look to buy a couple more to make the shoal a bit larger.

NEON TETRA FIN NIPPING UPDATE!!!!!

After the advice from you guys I wqent and got 2 more Neon Tetras taking the number up to 7. As a result they seem a lot calmer. So much so that the Neon that had his fins nipped is recovering well and there are obvious signs of the fin growing back!!!

Now see, here's something that I never knew, and wondered about.

I had 9 neons at one time and they just fought constantly sometimes there would be three of them violently circling and nipping at each other.
Then chasing each other around the tank. As time went buy three of them were so battered that they died. But the six remaining neons didn't fight as much after that. There we still some little spats here and there but nothing like it was.

I had no idea that they battled for group leadership. Two of the remaining fish looked really nice. The remaining four looked the wear and tear of a battle, but they were healthy and the remaining 6 got along quite well.

This is the only site I've ever found that talked about the behavior of the neons. All you ever hear is that they are a peaceful fish. I guess that's why I couldn't understand their violent behavior.

Thanks for the information. It makes me feel a whole lot better to know that my fish weren't actually possessed buy evil demons.

Great Thread. Excellent Info. Thanks a million.

I had a neon lose an eye one time, though I had never seen any aggression with my neons. He hid for days, but eventually started swimming with his school again, though he always swam lopsided... poor thing!

It's been my experience as well - Neons are 'peaceful' only towards other species, amongst themselves they bicker constantly!

I don't think they are possessed by evil demons - they are evil demons!

They're fun to watch, and so fast! *Tetra tag* But it's true, you need to keep the numbers up so the aggression is spread around enough that one fish isn't singled out.

When I got my first 6 Neons, they all came from the same tank and there was fairly mild aggression compared to what I'm seeing now, since I've added 11 more (Over the last 7 months, I lost or had to put down 5 Neons ) I've picked them up from 3 LFS in total - and the squabbling is crazy! The first 2 days were great, everyone was new (Except my one remaining Neon) and they schooled together - until they became comfortable in their new surroundings! Now, they have to establish a heirarchy. I hope it doesn't take too much longer. *Everybody* wants to be the boss!

Do you feel your LFS has healthy Neon stock? MY favorite place doesn't keep them stocked like they used to - they have moved to Cardinals instead.

There are lots of pet stores where I live. You don't have to go far in any direction and you'll find one. Sometimes you can find 3 different ones in the same shopping area.

Do they have healthy neon stock? Nope.

One time I was trying to stock my tank with neons. I bought a dozen from one store and they all died with in a couple of days. So I tried another store. Same thing happened. I tried yet another store bought the third dozen. No go.

I gave up after that and decided that I just didn't know how to keep them alive. And even though I had talked to some of my friends and they were having the same problems with buying neons I just figured it was all my fault.

Then I found a fish store that really looked like they took real good care of their fish. So I decided one day while I was in there that maybe I should try this again. And that's where I bought the 9 little evil demons. And after seeing how healthy and mean they were. I just knew, It couldn't have been me.

I've seen some fish store put up signs on tanks saying "fish not for sale being medicated" but unfortunatly there are those stores that will sell you sick fish just to make a sale.

Well you should ask the shop owner to pay you back the money since bad fish was sold without letting the buyer notice. That's really inresponsible.

I hope you didn't lose too much money on those untrustworthy stores.

Unlimitedfishboy

Well, right now it's just a little too late to get my money back. That happened about 2 or three years ago. At that time neons were going for about $2.00us a fish. So I would say I spent a good $72.00us+taxes.

I had found out some time later that the fish hatcheries were having a problem with neon tetra disease. I would assume that the hatcheries notified the stores. Of course then it would be up to the store owners to not sell the sick fish. Some did and some didn't.

But I've learned a good lesson here and now I know where to shop and where not to shop. I do believe that I'm not the only one that got taken advantage of. You can tell by the lack of business that these stores are doing now and from the now and then store closings.

They say that in a business, that a customers experience and word of mouth are their biggest advertisement. Whether it be good or bad.

Sometimes you wind up paying good money to learn a valuable lesson.
I know I did. I just chalk it up to another live and learn experience.

$72.00??!! That's a lot. It's a costly lesson you've learned!

Unlimitedfishboy