Fish Fighting

[freded]

Over recent weeks, I'd noticed that the larger of my two Severums (which I believe is male) was chasing the smaller (which I believe is female) Severum around the tank and would chase her whenever he saw her. He never seemed to actually bite her but would constantly chase her. Both Severum's are practically fully grown.

Worried that he may actually do some damage to the female (and to buy myself some time while I worked out what to do), I put him in my other tank which has got two small Oscars in it. The Severum seems to be nipping the Oscars and appears to have put some marks on one of the Oscars head.

The questions I've got are:

-could the chasing around the tank have been some kind of mating ritual and something I shouldn't have been overly concerned about. If so, I could put the male Severum back in with the female severum?

-if it was something I should have been concerned about and I was right separating them, is it possible that the Severum and Oscars could settle in together and the initial scraps are nothing to worry about too much?

If the Severum's likely to continue to attack the other severum and the oscars, I'll have to rehouse him with my parents, who have got a large tank that only houses a pleco.

 

[Don Trinko]

Almost all chiclids do this. It could be territorial,pecking order, or pairing up. I have had angel fish kill each other. I have 5 severum and they are doing the same thing. Prsonaly I prefer to keep them together unless they are actualy injuring each other. It can turn nasty when you aren't their and one could be injured or worse. The bigger the tank the less likely of severe damage. Don T.

 

[freded]

Almost all chiclids do this. It could be territorial,pecking order, or pairing up. I have had angel fish kill each other. I have 5 severum and they are doing the same thing. Prsonaly I prefer to keep them together unless they are actualy injuring each other. It can turn nasty when you aren't their and one could be injured or worse. The bigger the tank the less likely of severe damage. Don T.

Thanks. I'll see whether they have settled down when I get home tonight. If the Severum is still hassling the Oscars, I'll put him back in with the other Severum as although he was chasing her, he didn't seem to be inflicting any damage (whereas he seems to have inflicted some damage on the Oscars).

 

[ox5477]

a few questions fred:

What size tank did you have the two full grown sevs in?

What size tank are the o's in that you moved the bigger sev too?

How long have you had the two sevs?

 

[freded]

a few questions fred:

What size tank did you have the two full grown sevs in?

What size tank are the o's in that you moved the bigger sev too?

How long have you had the two sevs?

Sevs were in 100g tank.

The two baby Oscars are in 50g tank. Too small long term for them but its a temporary measure.

Had the severums a couple of weeks. The male has been chasing the female for last week or so -doesnt seem to have caused any damage but I was worried he might. Is the chasing normal?

 

[ox5477]

It could be them starting to mate, but it could just be he doesn't want her in his territory. I would watch them very closely and if you just see them lip-locking and nipping at eachother without cleaning off any rock surfaces or digging out a pit to lay eggs in then it is just fighting and you might need to return one of the fish. You can try adding more decor like plants or bogwood to help divide up the territory but it may never work, just gotta watch the fish

 

[freded]

It could be them starting to mate, but it could just be he doesn't want her in his territory. I would watch them very closely and if you just see them lip-locking and nipping at eachother without cleaning off any rock surfaces or digging out a pit to lay eggs in then it is just fighting and you might need to return one of the fish. You can try adding more decor like plants or bogwood to help divide up the territory but it may never work, just gotta watch the fish

Had an interesting night last night. I'd added a Tbar Cichlid on Saturday to my large tank and the Severums and Tbar ignored each other. However, the Severums had been infighting so I moved the larger Severum to the Oscar tank on Sunday night. The Severum picked on the Oscars so I put him back with the Tbar and other Severum last night. War broke out between the large Severum and Tbar with them lip locking for ages. The Tbar won and he now chases the Severums around the tank He also seems to have damaged the lip of the large Severum The one bright side is that the two Severums now seem to be more concerned about the Tbar than each other.

I'm going to have return the Tbar (as I can't risk him with the Oscars given that they couldn't cope with the Severum) and hope the two Severums settle down. The odd thing is that I've got a couple of baby Severums in the large tank that the Tbar and large Severums completely ignore.

 

[idlefingers]

Rather than keeping on moving them around the different tanks, get a divider in there so they can get accustomed to each other.

Dividers are (IMO) one of the most important pieces of equipment when keeping aggressive cichlids and will save a lot of agro..

 

[freded]

Rather than keeping on moving them around the different tanks, get a divider in there so they can get accustomed to each other.

Dividers are (IMO) one of the most important pieces of equipment when keeping aggressive cichlids and will save a lot of agro..

Good idea although not sure where I can get a divider for my tank-would need to be 16 inches wide by 21 inches high

 

[idlefingers]

Build your own. Much cheaper and pretty easy. Just get a decent sized sheet of plastic with holes in (can't think of the name for it right now) and cut to size. Or get a solid piece of plastic and drill a load of holes to let water pass through. So long as it's inert, solid and lets water through (and isn't sharp), you can use all sorts of things..

 

[freded]

Build your own. Much cheaper and pretty easy. Just get a decent sized sheet of plastic with holes in (can't think of the name for it right now) and cut to size. Or get a solid piece of plastic and drill a load of holes to let water pass through. So long as it's inert, solid and lets water through (and isn't sharp), you can use all sorts of things..

Thanks.

How long would I need to keep the divider in place?

 

[idlefingers]

If you leave it in for a few days to a week then remove it and see if they get along, if not, try again for longer. If it continues to not work after a few tries, it's probably never going to and you'd need to leave the divider in until you got one of the offending fish out.

If you have issues when removing the divider, you might want to try re-arranging the decor in the tank to break any territories.

There's no rule as to how to do this (that I'm aware of).. Just experiment and see if you can get them living in peace!

 

[ox5477]

I agree that the divider may never be able to be removed.... and even if you return the tbar back to the lfs or a friend, the sevs will prob go right back to fighting like they did before. Cichlids can be tricky because the tempermant of each fish determines everything. Some people get lucky and get very co-habitable fish of some some species that 99.9% of people would never keep with other species, but sometimes it just works.... but the majority of the time, aggression takes over and they just have to defend their territory

 

[freded]

I agree that the divider may never be able to be removed.... and even if you return the tbar back to the lfs or a friend, the sevs will prob go right back to fighting like they did before. Cichlids can be tricky because the tempermant of each fish determines everything. Some people get lucky and get very co-habitable fish of some some species that 99.9% of people would never keep with other species, but sometimes it just works.... but the majority of the time, aggression takes over and they just have to defend their territory

I'm going to see if things have settled down when I get home from work tonight. If not, a friend of mine is going to take the Tbar. The recent fighting between the Tbar and the Severums makes the fighting between the Severums seem like childs play.

 

[Don Trinko]

If the severum are just chasing each other and doing no damage I would wait and see. With chiclids there is alway some danger of damage or death. Don T.