"Jim Morcombe" wrote in message
...
A several months ago I put a rather agresive angel into my "hospital"
tank
because it kept beating up the other Angels.

Amongst a series of incidents I squashed him with a sharp piece of
slate and
took a great chunk out of his side.

The hole never seemed to heal and at one stage he was lying flat on the
bottom and I thought he was as good as dead. However, he survived.

He never showed any energy after the accident and the hole was very
slow to
heal.

To keep him com pany I put a few baby Electric Yellows in with him and
a
bristlenose. Initially there were a few amusing episodes between him
and
one of the Yellows, but these stopped after a few weeks.

He would just sit in a corner and do nothing.

Eventually his wound seemed a bit better and I put him back with the
other
Angels in a community aquaroum.

The next day he was chasing and terrorising the other Angels. Within a
few
days, the wound in his side was healed without a trace.

Unbelievable.

Jim

Thanks for sharing the story Jim. To me it illustrates a few things.
Isolating alpha fish will not always reset the pecking order differently
when they are re-introduced. The probability of it NOT working increases
with i) intelligence of the fish (cichlids=high=better memory), ii)
familiarity of the environment (planted tanks always look like planted
tanks ;~), and how dynamic the pecking order is (Angels, Discus etc seem
to have a slightly less dynamic pecking order, perhaps because they are
larger and slower moving?, while highly aggressive fish like mbuna have a
much more dynamic pecking order, so changes in command are more likely to
occur, and be accepted).

The other interesting phenomena was the rate of wound repair in the
community tank. I've always felt that hospital tanks were poor
environments for recovery and only suitable for the duration of a
medicinal dosage. It's equivalent to putting someone in solitary
confinement until they get better ;~). Quarantine & hospital tanks can
be identically set-up, but recovery tanks should have shelter and some
chances of interaction with other fish. Besides the effect on the fish's
metabolism (and immune system), I wonder if there was anything in the
community tank's water which speeded recovery (chemical, hormonal,
inducing to slime production etc).

I've noticed similar effects. Most recently, a tank of leleupis reached
maturity and they all decided that it was all-out war in the tank.
Rather than separating them into iso/hospital tanks, I sprinkled them one
to a tank with other Africans (leleupis hold their own well with other
Africans and tend to ignore anything which is not bright yellow like
them). All but one recovered perfectly (the exception was too far gone),
and I have no doubt that if any had gone into the iso tanks, they would
have slowly wasted away.

My best recovery tanks are my plant tanks, highest up off the floor. Low
tanks are more stressful to fish (maybe like birds & cats, they feel more
secure looking down on us, but unlike birds, fish don't seem to have too
much of an opportunity to look down on anything ;~), and in nature,
fish-prey would be more exposed at the surface than in the deep, so go
figure).

NetMax