My rescued black skirt tetra always hides and comes up to eat only once every week or so. Theres a chinese algae eater (also a rescue) and a pistilla and a glolight tetra. They're in a rubbermaid with 12 gallons of water in it, is it just lonely? Tomorrow i'll probably get another black skirt tetra and maybe a white skirt tetra, i'll see if that will make it feel better.

They are schooling fish, so it might be loneliness. (But I heard that they can be aggressive with their own species.)

What are you feeding them?

the algae eater get algae wafers and shrimp pellets, the tetras get tetramin flakes, some freezedried foods or veggies occasionally, and alot of flies fall into the tub and cant get out so the big black skirt tetra gets those occasionally. I know they are schooling fish, that was the best I could do for now, I rescued him from our tiny school tank.

i think you should try and get the black skirt into a new tank wit other blackskirts. dont introduce a single one, because that will probably upset the one you already have. try to get it a school
theese fish realy have a pecking order, so try to introduce a few other blackskirts at the same time. i cant stress how important this is with tetras.

I dont have another tank with tetras, i'll get 2 more tomorrow probably

I agree. When I got my first 2 blue tetras one was very docile and the other quite agressive, chasing most the other fish in the tank. The nice one died and I bought 2 more blues. They are both in the middle of the pecking order I think. The aggressive one chases the new blues like he should and they chase him but he is still chasing his other tankmates as well--maybe if I had room for a school of blues he would fit in better.

I'll just get 2 more tomorrow and see what happens, the pistilla and glolight get along great, but the blackskirt is always left out, I guess its cause they're not the same bodyshape, cause glolight and neons school together, and glolights and pistillas I guess, cause mine do.