Terrific fish, one of my favourites from long ago; I was excited to see the thread title. These guys may have been stressed during and immediately after shipment, but they certainly looked like they had been healthy and feeding well before that. I watched the first video and thought "He is going to
love these fish!"
Then I watched the second one and thought "Yep! Bounced back as expected".
These guys can be as moody as Oscars, and they are aggressive feeders but not generally aggressive otherwise to fish too large to swallow. Fish in the in-between size range definitely present a choking hazard to Largemouths as they are very much an eat-first-think-later kind of predator. Very easy to switch over to dead foods, DIY gels, pellets, etc.
They're actually pussycats, in terms of aggression, compared to other smaller members of the sunfish group to which they belong. They're always on display, always on the alert, very interactive; I've never personally kept Peacock Bass, but in the videos I've watched the Peacocks remind me very much of the
real bass, i.e. Largemouths and Smallmouths...except of course the real ones are much cooler!
Your videos brought me to the realization that, while Smallmouth are common in the wild locally and thus
verboten to me...Largemouth are technically not native to my province of Manitoba...which suggests that I may be able to keep them legally...as long as they aren't on the extensive list of banned-by-name species. Gotta look into that.
Looking forward to more on these new additions!