Hi guys,
Dexter, my latest o' has taken to occasionally doing a "lion act" where he comes up to the glass, puffs himself up, flares his gills and bites at the glass.
He also changes his colour from pitch black to nearly see through grey when he does this, then seconds later he'll calm down and go pitch black again, is he just playing around, is it a show of force, or something else?
thanks.

It is showing off on what he's capable of.
Mine does exactly the same, he looks like a baseball when he blows up, and becomes very pales.If this happens at night with the nightlights on I can indeed see through his fins.
Amazing ability!
Mine does it mostly when I turn off the lights in the room.

mine does exactly the same thing. and at night most of the time when the rest of my lights are out. my theory is, with black behind the glass, and light inside the aquarium, the fish is seeing his own reflection and is trying to intimidate "the intruder".

quite the spectical. mine goes one step farther and attacks its own reflection with a quick burst of speed i can only equate to a dragster doing a burnout. he tries to bite it, and then when that doesnt work, hes nose to the glass and just wails with his tail and tries to push the reflection away!

always amusing as hell to me

Oh, there reactions are so cool and similar.
Stange thing is my O will back down if I put a mirror in front of the tank...
Still I think it's his reflection too, that mekes him blow up.

ill have to try the mirror thing... sounds like it could be a neat experiment.

Just tried it once to show my O's colourchanging capabilitys to a fishkeeping friend.
He changed colour within seconds!

okay u got me willing to try it now. ill have to video it of course!

on a side note here, i was just observing these minnows here in my tank... they are trying to kill each other! i ahd never noticed minnows act so agressivly towards one another, usually they always schooled peacfully. so wierd.

Same here!!!
In my 90 Gl i got one male left and his female died and one Sumatran died.
Now he's going after the last Sumatran all the time...
Think he may have killed the other ones.
He leaves the small fish completely unnoticed!

ive had two killed in the last day.

Scooling fish, right.
That may be what is causing the aggression in my tank.
Maybe I shouldt give him a holiday in the big tank...lol

these are just fishing minnows i bought at the baitshop, had them left over from when i caught that bass the other day. thought the oscar might eat them, and he doest even seem intrested at all.

Wanna borrow my GAR?
He'll do some radicals cleaning for you!lol