Kribensis - Aggressive & Impossible To Catch

[silverchild23]

Hi

This weekend I went out with my girlfriend looking to buy a pair of Kribensis for our S.American community tank (yes, I know Kribs are african), which we duly did.

It just turns out we got a particularly aggressive male. He harasses the female all the way home and by the time we got home she was absolutely shellshocked. She spend the first day hidden in the tank, staying still in one spot. We tried everything we could to calm her, but this morning we found her dead. I think it was all too much for her poor thing. The male is a little terror! He nips fins, chases the keyholes (even though he was kept with keyholes at the LFS) and generally gets in everybody's face.

We knew he was aggressive soon as we put him in the tank, but spent a good two-three hours yesterday trying to catch him but to no avail. And all that trying to catch him was stressing out the other fish so we decided to call it a day. Problem is, I'm at work all week and by the time I get home I am well out of LFS opening hours. I'm going to try and catch him again on Saturday and take him to our LFS.

But what can I do in the meantime? I dont want him stressing out the rest of the tank, and I dont have a spare tank to put him in to seperate him? Is there anything else I can do? Also - any tips for catching him?

 

[jimw13uk]

to catch him - use two nets and drive him into one using the other.
I would remove all the decorations out of the tank so you have a bare tank and no hiding places for him.

Can you get a floating breeding trap - you could put him in their for a while to keep him away from all the other tank mates

 

[CFC]

Sometimes the best way to catch fish like that is to drain the tank down so there is only an inch of water in the bottom so that it cant get away, but if your tank is large then having enough buckets to keep the water in is a problem.

If you cant do that then you have to take all the decore out of the tank and use two nets, one to chase the fish into the other.

Its usually best not to mix Cichlids from different geographies in the same tank, keep South Americans with South Americans and West Africans with West Africans and the same goes for Central Americans and rift valley species too.

 

[silverchild23]

Ok thanks

Trust me, I will be keeping S.As with S.As in future.

I'll have to take the decor out then (although I;m reluctant to do so)....I'll see about one of those floating breeding traps too if he continues to be aggressive.

Thanks guys

 

[cheesy feet]

was the females jaw locked open when she died.this happend to a few of mine when i was tranferring them to a friend [on a bike ]

 

[silverchild23]

Yeah she did have lock-jaw - I just put it down to the other fish pecking her as she died (i didn't see anything as it was overnight). So that happened to you too?

 

[cheesy feet]

Yeh it happend to some perfectly healthy kribs when i was tranffering them.It must be quite common.I guess it's from stress.