M
mark
Guest
Today I put my 12cm juvenile pleuros in to my tank of 20cm adults, deeming them large enough not to get eaten (I hope!). Even as juveniles it's possible to get an idea of sex from the cloaca size so I placed what I thought were females in first. The adults regarded them with interest, lots of body "sniffing" and face rubbing. When I put the first of the juvie males in some odd behaviour took place.
The largest adult male approached him and pushed his face up against his, snout to snout. The juvie coiled its tail into an "S" shape and started flicking the end very fast. Whilst this flicking was taking place the adult gently bit the face of the juvie a number of times (**heart skipping moment**) before moving apart.
In 15 year of keeping this species I have never seen tail flicking or fanning and this clearly wasn’t breeding behaviour. I suspect it was some sort of submissive reaction by the juvie and maybe some dominance reaction by the adult. Very interesting. Has anyone else ever seen this before?
The largest adult male approached him and pushed his face up against his, snout to snout. The juvie coiled its tail into an "S" shape and started flicking the end very fast. Whilst this flicking was taking place the adult gently bit the face of the juvie a number of times (**heart skipping moment**) before moving apart.
In 15 year of keeping this species I have never seen tail flicking or fanning and this clearly wasn’t breeding behaviour. I suspect it was some sort of submissive reaction by the juvie and maybe some dominance reaction by the adult. Very interesting. Has anyone else ever seen this before?