Strange male Bellus Angelfish behavior

[mdowney]

I’ve had a male Bellus Angelfish for several months and about two weeks ago I noticed his pectoral fins were all chewed up. So I watched him for a while and saw that he kept swimming up to other fish, leaning to one side, and presenting his fin like he wanted them to bite it. He did this a lot to my male, blue throat trigger who usually ignored him but I did see the trigger take a bite a couple of times.
I ended up pulling the Angelfish and putting him in a 40 gal where I QT corals. He’s in there with a few much smaller fish and I notice he’ll occasionally resume the same behavior.
What is he doing???

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I’ve had a male Bellus Angelfish for several months and about two weeks ago I noticed his pectoral fins were all chewed up. So I watched him for a while and saw that he kept swimming up to other fish, leaning to one side, and presenting his fin like he wanted them to bite it. He did this a lot to my male, blue throat trigger who usually ignored him but I did see the trigger take a bite a couple of times.
I ended up pulling the Angelfish and putting him in a 40 gal where I QT corals. He’s in there with a few much smaller fish and I notice he’ll occasionally resume the same behavior.
What is he doing???

Not sure exactly, but it sounds like it is posturing for cleaning behavior. There are a number of fish that are facultative cleaner fish (not just obligate cleaners like cleaner wrasses). It may be that the Bellus knows it has damaged fins and is doing the only thing a pelagic fish can do, present to other fish fish for "cleaning". Of course, the fin damage isn't likely to be due to parasites like they would be in the wild.....

Jay