panda cories suddenly fighting?

[thisisyesterday]

Hiya,
hope someone can give me some insight on my cories?
I have 5 (one died a week or so ago) and they have always got on just fine. absolutely no problem

tonight 2 of the others have started attacking one of the others. it's always the same one they attack.

what's going on?
i have nowhere else to put it...

It's normal for shoaling fish to scrap to sort out the pecking order of the shoal. It could be a temporary thing since the death of that one fish might have caused a shuffle in the pecking order. Or it could be because the fish is ill so the other fish are attacking it to get rid of it.

What happened to the one that died, did it have any symptoms? How old was it?

A breeding net might do as a temporary measure until you've figured out what's wrong, you can get them in most pet shops for a few quid. Stick a handful of java moss or something in there so he's got somewhere to hide.

As an after-thought... do you think they might just be spawning? How violent are they getting?

the one that died had absolutely no visible symptoms of anything at all... jjust found it dead one day. perfect colour, fins/tail all intact, no bloating..
age-wise I am not entirely sure, if it was one of our original ones then it was about 3 years, but we got some new ones about a year ago now too so possible it was one of them

DP did watch them for a while longer last night and reckons that actually the one they were having a go at may be our only female as she is much bigger and fatter than the others and that perhaps it was some kind of mating thing.
it was quite weird though, i thought she was dead at one point as she was just lying there and they were all swimming at her and it looked like they were biting at her... but actually all her fins etc are fine and we can't see any damage

they seem fine so far today :-S

If it is breeding behaviour then you should seem some eggs pretty soon. They normally stick them to the glass or to a rock in a big group so they're pretty easy to spot.

cool will keep an eye out

will other fish eat the eggs?

More than likely, but if your tank is heavily planted and your cory is crafty about where she lays her eggs then you might get a Christmas surprise

awww, yes we do have plenty of plants.

we had some baby ones before actually, they were very cute.
then when they were quite big (nearly adult size) they died, no apparent rhyme or reason :(