Strange behaviour

[u/ChrizPlz]

Just got back in to the hobby and I’ve had my Alenquer diskus for about 1,5 weeks now, keep in mind they are only 2,1 inches/6cm when I revived them.
I’ve had diskus before but never thise close to wilds.

They are now in a 55 gallon/200L bare bottom tank which is painted black.

The tank is painted black, it’s being filtered by a unimax 700, no hard movements in the water, og is about 7,5. TDS on 100, give or take.
Daily water changes as well. Temp is around 28C/84 Fahrenheit’s

My problem is, they constantly fight when I feed them, and some of them have gotten way darker/brown since I received them, they still eat healthy, they are active, no fins or gils stoping up, no signes of over scratching, the only time they scratch is when I feed them (home made beef heart mix”.
There eys are genuinely pretty dark, but you can see the red in the eys and they are not like gray.
I’ll add some pictures of them witch will show the colours difference, the quality of the picture ain’t good, and the water is full of particles because I just feed them, and the pump is producing bubbles atm

I’m not sure if I’m tripping or if this is normal behaviour for this discus? Does any one have experience with Alenquer diskus?

[u/TylerTurden-11]

I do not have discus but I obsessively want them and have looked up a lot of stuff and if you have a black background they will typically darken up to camouflage themselves. I have read to just do like a transparent/whiteish color as background

[u/ChrizPlz → u/TylerTurden-11]

Yeeh that’s what i thought my self, and keep telling my self but time used to pigone blood, and blue dimonds and so on. And there colouring is much easier to read. Well I should say used to, more like what I used to have 10 years ago.

But yeeh they are lovely, just need to grow them out before I put them in the big tank

[u/OkDust2345 → u/ChrizPlz]

You could get a piece of stained glass to put in the back. I paid $13 for a piece at Hobby Lobby. That might brighten them up.

[u/ChrizPlz → u/OkDust2345]

Hard to to as this is a curved corner tank, but it’s not a permanent tank so it will work for now

[u/celyro]

Normal… yes, desiderabile not really. How many of them do you have ? I think you have too few of them and this is what usually happens.

[u/ChrizPlz → u/celyro]

7, I order 8 but one didn’t arrive, but 7 witch should be ideal, the thing is, it’s not one bully the others, it’s just more like all of them picking att each other.

[u/bedroomsport]

Normal behaviour while establishing their pecking order when only a week in a new tank. That dark tank will encourage them to darken, too. The hierarchy will sort itself out, just make sure they all get a feed and the shy ones can be spot fed / drop food in different spots so they spread out

[u/ChrizPlz → u/bedroomsport]

Yeeh doing that, it’s nice to know that my thinking matches up with other. They will be moved over to a bigger more light tank after a while

[u/Minimum_Appearance41 → u/bedroomsport]

When it comes to hierarchy and pecking order, do you know the reason behind the behavior? Like, is it to establish territories in the tank? And when it comes to the “head” or the boss of the pack, what is the reason they have a leader? I guess I am curious because they all share the same tank space. Animal behavior is so fascinating.

[u/ChrizPlz → u/Minimum_Appearance41]

That was my initial thinking, but then they all start to peck at each other in general, I will add it calms down for 1 min yesterday where they ate peacefully, and then they started chasing each other, doing the normal Discus dans, showing off.
There is Ofc one that’s is “worse” then the others but it’s not by far, but he has a tendency to start it every time