Male Kribensis suddenly hates tank mates?

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Ryan Morris

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Hi there, my male kribensis has all of a sudden taken a dislike to every single fish in the tank with him?? Even the female he has paired up with! The 2 of them have been paired up since I got them about 2 months ago, showing spawning behaviour the lot although I’ve never had any fry from them. They where recently digging a lot and the female was hiding for a couple of days then all of a sudden she appears again. A few days after she came back out, my male now hates her? Even the Serpae Tetra who never bother the Kribs are under attack. I went out and got another 2 female Kribs today to see if it would maybe take the pressure of the female I already had but now he has another 2 fish he wants to kill! What do I do? I’m upgrading to a 260 litre tank tomorrow so will he calm down a bit with having some more space to himself?
 
He is probably guarding the babies.

Adding new fish is not the best thing to do with cichlids guarding their nest because it puts more pressure and stress on the parents and makes the problem worse. The fish think "more intruders, ahhhhh, go away".

If you are moving the fish into a bigger tank soon, move the other fish out but leave the male and original female behind and see if any babies appear. If you don't see babies in 2 weeks then carefully lift the rock or whatever he is hiding under and see what is there.

Make sure you leave some plants and hiding places in the tank so the parents feel more secure.

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If you were planning on moving the old filter onto the new tank, leave the old filter on the old tank but take half the filter material and put it in the new filter on the new tank. Then top up both filters with new material.

Reduce the feeding in the new tank for the first few weeks and monitor ammonia and nitrite levels, and do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate on any day you have an ammonia or nitrite reading above 0.
 
Just to echo Colin's comments, the behaviour sounds very like they're being territorial due to either having just had or about to have eggs/fry.

I would take the two females back immediately as Kribs are better kept in pairs of a male and female. Adding extra of one sex isn't going to make things any better. You might get away with 2 pairs in a 4ft+ tank but I'd just stick to one pair.

They're normally quite territorial around spawning but in a tank of the right size they can co-exist with other inhabitants without too much hassle. However, I'm guessing from your "I'm about to upgrade to a bigger tank" comments that your tank isn't a particularly big one so that is probably the main reason you're having trouble.

A bigger tank will give all the fish more space to spread out in and should mean they'll leave the other fish alone a bit more, or at least the other fish have space to move out of the Kribs area.

I would do what Colin says and put all the other fish in the new tank, keep the pair in the current one and see how they get on. Once you've established whether there is eggs/fry present or not you can then either leave them there until the fry are able to look after themselves or move the adults if there aren't any eggs/fry. I'd also take the two female Kribs you've just bought back to the shop as you're only asking for more problems by keeping them.
 

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