Fascinating behaviour of NGT with IT

Sygoomei

New Member
Hey peeps, been... oh... years (?) since I last posted anything here. But I've had some recent developments in my tank over the last few months that I think were more noteworthy here than BCA.

This is in regards to Tu'Big the Indo Tiger that I bought from King Ed's about 4-5 years ago. He was the size of a quarter and Joo had a hard time finding baby guppies small enough for it. Always, "Too big, too big!"

Anyway, he's grown to ~5", about 3 of that in a month after meeting the Aro... Now sold... Well he slowed down in growth and one day I posted, I think here, that he had a growth, kind of like a pimple growing out of his head. The pimple grew and grew, until one day it popped and he had a gaping hole in his head for a few months. According to everything I read, he had "Datnoid Disease" and everyone said he'd be dead in a few days.

Well he didn't die. Tu'Big became the King of the tank; with even the Aro fleeing from his angry pecks. Though he was fair and often breaks up fights between the two remaining (Pookie the 16" died a few weeks ago) Fei Feng left in the tank. He rarely picks on a single fish, though the overgrown feeder goldfish is the most common taget...

Anyway we're off target here. There's Silver Tiger I introduced to the tank a couple years later that usually sits in the corner. His name's Steve, as named by my cousin who named his rat Boot. Well he's been coming out of his corner the last few months and I'll watch as Tu'Big angles his body around, to nearly lying on his side, as Steve seems to zero in on a point and take a bite. Tu'Big does not react to this at all, and Steve lines up for the next hit.

It appears however, that Steve is eating the parasite out of Tu'Big's head however. Traditionally, whenever I feed Tu'Big, he gets another round of his pimple/puss/gaping hole in the head issue. He was just having another bout when this behavior started. Suddenly, instead of a small pimple, there was a small hole and a day later it healed up completely.

A few weeks later, another hole and Steve'd be on it in no time. By now, Tu'Big can eat a full 10-15 Massivore pellets any time I want to feed him, which is once a day at most, but he hasn't had an issue in nearly a month now. Quite the contrary, I must say, he's actually putting on crazy weight and seems to be growing considerably if I feed once per day. It's hard to get pellets to the Bichirs with two growing Dat's, a 6-8" feeder goldfish (was food for the Aro, but escaped certain death many many times, can't bring myself to get rid of him...), and two constantly hungry Phoenix.

Anyway, I'd like to take a vid, but I can't find my camera... I'll try to find something soon. Though the parasite seems to be gone, Steve still picks off problem scales on Tu'Big. If he looks scuffed in some sense, Steve will pick up the falling off scales it seems. Has anyone else ever seen such behavior?
 

RTG_Gerry

Super Moderator
That's pretty darn cool! I've never heard of tigers doing this. You need to get that on video if you ever get the chance!
 

Cirrus

Arowana blogger
Wow, very interesting behaviour described for sure, reminds me of "cleaner fish" in marine settings. If you could video this right, it could go viral on fish sites dealing with large fish keepers. :)
 
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