Are Elongate Dottybacks meant to be tilted?

[Tired]

I have this little dottyback in QT while the main tank is fallow, and I've noticed it always seems to be slightly tilted to one side. Is this normal for them?

 

[Cheese Griller]

is it always tilted the same direction? Dottybacks have interesting swimming patterns, and will often change their orientation to get a better angle on something they're looking at. As long as the fish appears to be in control of its buoyancy I wouldn't be worried.

 

[Wasabiroot]

Could it be orienting itself so the light is above it? I notice my freshwater fish do this before the tank lights go on

 

[Tired]

Could it be orienting itself so the light is above it? I notice my freshwater fish do this before the tank lights go on

You might be onto something. I'd forgotten that fish will do this, and the tank /is/ lit by sunlight from a nearby window. It's definitely tilting towards the window in this photo, and seems to maintain the same angle of tilt at all times. I'll have to wait and see if it stops doing this once it's in the main tank, lit only by overhead lights.

I wonder if that feels strange to it. Does any part of its little brain register that gravity is pulling in a different direction than the light, or are swim-bladder-having fish so unaffected by gravity that it doesn't even factor in? Reef fish in particular seem prone to taking the nearest solid surface as 'down', as opposed to something like a tetra that will always be more or less upright.

I'm not concerned either way. It seems perfectly in control of itself, it moves fine, and it eats well. My thought was either that it's trying to look both upward and downward at the same time, or that it has something askew in its balance controls, but angling itself towards light would make sense.

Heck, I once inadvertently got a whole shoal of tetras to swim tilted to at least a 45-degree angle by forgetting to turn on the tank light and letting a sunbeam hit the tank for awhile instead. Made me wonder if I could have gotten them to swim upside-down if I'd put a light /under/ the tank and shut off everything else. Probably not.