Issues with my angels.

[forrestcook]

Okay - I have a 29 gallon which since the beginning has had 2 angels (the pair from a larger group of juveniles), 3 otos and 3 yoyo loaches. Throughout the life span of the tank I've had a number of different fish pass through...

some silver tip tetras that started hiding all the time instead of swimming (returned)
a blue gourami that started out submissive and friendly and became a major fin nipping butthead (returned)
an african dwarf frog that couldn't compete for food (moved to a 10 gallon)

and now, i just filled in my small schooling fish hole again with 8 harlequin rasboras (love the way they look swimming through the plants!)

Last night after a big water change and algae removal project (tons of hair algae... I think i'm dosing wrong) I was sitting and enjoying watching the fish when I noticed 15-20, my pretty striped angelfish with beautiful long fins biting the crap out of my marbled angel's (MC) fins. MC has always had stumpy fins and I figured it was just natural. I'm beginning to think that he may just get picked on a lot. Last night he received several new tears from 15-20. And while he was getting bit he just floated there perpendicular to 15-20 (like a T, with MC being the top portion). Then, he shuddered a lot, mostly shaking his anal fin, but shaking the pectoral fins as well.

MC does not act scared of 15-20 and 15-20 does not always nip MC... in fact they almost constantly swim right next to each other.

During my research, I saw something referenced as an angel disease called "The shimmy" but couldn't find much more information on it.

I don't want to have fish that are going to bite the crap out of each other because it no longer will be a de-stressing time of my day to take care of them and watch them, but rather the opposite. Does anyone have experience with this sort of Angel behavior? I'm at a point where I would like to either get rid of MC and keep 15-20 by himself (I say him for both because i have no idea what sex they actually are) or just get rid of both. I don't have space to separate them (I have a 29 and a 10) and my wife is super attached to them.... so I'm at a bit of a loss for what to do.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Forrest Cook

[mitcore]

my thoughts on this are as follows

sometimes the angels will attack each other this is because they are trying to find the perfect partner, they do this when they are just about to pair up,
it is usally the male who does it and once he is happy with the female they will pair up and then in a matter of time they will spawn,
i would only worry about this if the female is getting attcked to bad, then i would put her in some other tank to heal, it is a normal process of angels to do this
it is similar to us humans we check out the other sex before we commit and yes we can be fairly agressive too :-) i hope this helps i dont know much about diseases sorry

[smaug]

Im surprised that it has taken this long for your angels natural aggression to come to a head in a 29 gal tank with so many other tank mates.It sounds to me like your MC is on his way to the great porceline bowl in the sky.Your tank is too small and overstocked for 2 angels,I know that may not seem right but it is so.I had the same problem in a 58 gal tank and I had to get rid of my aggressor angel and I kept the submissive.I say submissive as he was only submissive to the other angels he is an absolute demon to all the other fish.Your decision really is limited to keeping just one of them.Thinning out the population of the other fish will not save MC either.Good luck with whatever you choose to do but do it quickly,mC doesnt have much time left.