# The SAE who thought he was a Black Neon Tetra



## megamax42 (Jun 28, 2011)

Hello all,

Thought what I experienced with my first SAE was a funny story so I decided to share it.

After my Angelfish died of Camallanus worms I took everything down and started over again. This time starting out with 5 RCS, 9 Black Neon Tetras and 1 SAE.

However when I first introduced the lone SAE to the tetras and RCS he seemed to have a bit of an identity crisis. I believe his longitudinal black strip running the length of the fish led him to believe he was a Black Neon Tetra. He spent all day trying to swim and school with the tetras, even going as far as adopting the same eating techniques and leaving the little bit of BBA alone. He even fooled the tetras, when he would swim one direction the tetras would follow in the exact same direction and orientation.

Well since he has no swim bladder he struggled to keep up with the tetras and at one point I was actually worried about him. He would spend all day flapping those fins to keep in the water column then the evening would roll around and he was stuck in the same spot on the substrate for hours on end, from what I assume was tiredness.

Here's a video of him trying to school with the tetras:
http://imageshack.us/clip/my-videos/3/aev.mp4/

So I decided to go buy a new SAE and reaffirm his identity for him and got one a little bit bigger than him. At first the original SAE reacted to the new one the same way the tetras did, however it appeared that after about 3 days he started to see enough similarities in the new SAE that he became more and more comfortable until he finally became 'friends' with him and finally understood his species.

He still hangs out with his friends, the Tetras, every once in a while, however his new role as a true SAE seems to suit him well and it would appear his identity crisis is over.


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## hornedtoad1 (Jun 24, 2011)

really funny video; reminds me of when i was raising angel fish--some of the new hatches would swim upside down for awhile until they saw the other guys weren't.


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## Silvering (Jun 10, 2011)

Where's the "like" button on here?  That's a really funny video! I wouldn't have thought a fish could have an identity crisis. But he did look awfully similar to those tetras....


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## juantoro (Feb 25, 2010)

That's hilarious! 

"Hey guys! How do you stay off the bottom so easily? Guys, hey guys, can't we go rest on the bottom for a bit? Come on, just for a bit? Maybe go nibble on some algae? Come on guys, aren't you getting tired? No? OK, we'll just keep swimming then."


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## megamax42 (Jun 28, 2011)

Thanks all for the friendly comments



hornedtoad1 said:


> really funny video; reminds me of when i was raising angel fish--some of the new hatches would swim upside down for awhile until they saw the other guys weren't.


lol thats funny, I'd love to see those little guys swimming. That would be hilarious if in the wild that happened but they got separated and a group just stayed upside down



Silvering said:


> Where's the "like" button on here? That's a really funny video! I wouldn't have thought a fish could have an identity crisis. But he did look awfully similar to those tetras....


Thanks! Yeah I was surprised how similar they look, the coloring matches almost exactly



juantoro said:


> That's hilarious!
> 
> "Hey guys! How do you stay off the bottom so easily? Guys, hey guys, can't we go rest on the bottom for a bit? Come on, just for a bit? Maybe go nibble on some algae? Come on guys, aren't you getting tired? No? OK, we'll just keep swimming then."


:biggrin1: lmao I could definitely see him thinking that


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## asukawashere (Mar 11, 2009)

I think this just goes to show that fish aren't just the mindless, instinct-driven automatons many people think they are. A lot of their behavior is learned.

I do feel kind of bad for him, though. He's trying very hard to be a good tetra in that vid...

The tetras following his lead isn't that surprising, though. In the wild, many schools of fish are found to contain multiple species of similar shape and/or coloration. And a schooling fish that gets separated from its group would sooner join a different species than swim alone (as long as the other species wasn't predatory toward them, LOL). So "adopted" members of schools aren't uncommon.


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