[jnaz]

I have over 100 Cherries going nuts in my heavily planted 50 gal. They are all swimming back and forth, left to right, right to left, in the front part of the aquarium. My tank looks like I have a 12 laned Cherry highway on the inside. At any given time I have at least 40 swimming around.The Amanos and CRS are acting normal and the water tests all came back normal so what's going on? I have not changed a thing to it for the past few days and this did not start until today. One would think that the CRS would be the first to react to something funny going on in the tank so I am baffled. I have had cherries in my tank for almost 2 years and this is the first time this has occured.

Any ideas?

Normal behavior?

Should I be worried about a shrimp apocolypse? Maybe they were the first to hear about it and they are keeping it from the CRS and Amanos.

 

[oblongshrimp]

Most likely a female RCS just molted and is looking for a mate. Most or all of the ones swimming are likely males. If they are then don't worry about as they will settle down in a few hours.

 

[Sunstar]

oh if they are going nuts, then there is at least one female saying!!! here I am, aren't I pretty!

 

[JohnPaul]

I agree with the others. When a female molts and is ready to mate, she releases a phermone into the water to signal this fact to nearby males. At that point, the males start swimming around in a delirium trying to find her. Since there is usually some amount of water circulation in a tank, they can't simply "follow" the chemical signal to the female, so they basically go nuts swimming all around hoping to get lucky and bump into her.

 

[Sunstar]

its actually hilarious to watch. Then when they finally find her.... then they keep finding the poor girl and she starts to throw them off. lasts about 5 hours.

 

[jnaz]

It's now been going on 2 days. She must be hiding.

 

[Sunstar]

I found that a bunch of mine went off at almost the same time. Might be a particular hatching that's going bananas?