Aggressive Scianochromis Fryeri

[Finarfin]

Well I guess it was too good to last, despite what I've read about how aggressive S. Fryeri males are to other S. Fryeri males, I thought I was beating the odds having three nicely coloured males and a fourth partially coulored in my 90G. Things have changed for the worse with the dominant male getting very aggressive and continually harrasing mostly the second largest male. I've been hoping he'd settle down after mating with what appears to be the lone female in a group of 7 S Fryeri, but he seems to have had a permanent personality shift. There are also 5 electric yellows and a trio of Aulonocara in the tank. So, should I get rid of him and hope the remaining three stay peaceful, or bite the bullet and keep only the nicest male (the dominant one). I know I need more females, I'm raising some fry but it will be a few months before theyre big enough. In the mean time I need to de-fuse this situation before there's a death in the tank. Suggestions?

 

[gixer]

personally i wopuld keep the dominant male and loose the others.. one of the other males would soon take over anyway.

more females are deffinatly needed though. at least 3 IMO

 

[freddyk]

How big is the tank? The number of males you can keep depends on this. Anything 4ft long or less, I'd recommend keeping your nicest and selling the rest. No sense in keeping a couple of under-colored and stressed out males.

 

[Finarfin]

4ft tank. I'm going to try pulling the lone female out. Hopefully that will settle down the aggressive male mating behavior. If that doesn't work then I'll have to pare down on males. I'll just toss her back in when I'm ready for another batch of fry.

 

[gixer]

4ft tank. I'm going to try pulling the lone female out. Hopefully that will settle down the aggressive male mating behavior. If that doesn't work then I'll have to pare down on males. I'll just toss her back in when I'm ready for another batch of fry.

that wont stop agression between the males at all to be honest only option in my opinion is to loose a couple of males and increse the females.

the males will always be intollerent of their own regardless. IME

 

[Finarfin]

I pulled the Fryeri female and the Aulonocara females too as I noticed he also was displaying to them. I also re-aranged the tank to create many more hidey-holes in the rock-work. Things seem to be settling down, no more fish cowering at the top of the tank and just the usual territorial skirmishes. I'll keep an eye on things for a few days and my fingers crossed.

 

[Finarfin]

Well, contrary to popular opinion, pulling the female haps and peacocks out of the tank worked. It's been a month and aggression levels have dropped nicely. No beat-up fish, just the usual low-level skirmishes. Looks like male S. Fryeri aggresssion is directly related to the presence of females, at least in these paticular fish.

 

[gixer]

for now would be my guess.

are you happy to have your tank stocked that way too?

 

[freddyk]

Good to hear it worked, and with the bland color of females there's not much point to them taking up space if you don't need to breed them.

 

[Finarfin]

Of course I'd prefer to have everyone "just get along" but this seems to be the best compromise. The dominant male's colouration is spectacular when in full display but he's way too aggressive. It's more of a show tank than a species tank. I enjoy raising fry but if I had one male and a half-dozen females I wouldn't be able to keep up with the fry production. I'm more of a hobbiest than a serious breeder. The next thing I'm considering is throwing the smaller sub-dominant males that haven't coloured up in with the female. Once they've blued up I'll chuck them back in the bachelor tank. I just can't get enough of that flourescent blue! I'm raising a batch of fry now and will try to hang on to a bunch of females. I may swap over to a single male with a harem of females some time in the future when I'm ready for a change.