Nijsseni help?!

[gex18]

I purchased a pair of nijsseni yesterday, they were stuck in the bag for 3 hours (my car decided to blow its head gasket on the way back from the LFS :evil: ), they have been in the tank for 24 hours but are hiding constantly, (also the female is aggresive towards the male?!), the tank is 60"x20"x24" and contains the following;

9 Discus
3 Whiptails
3 Zebra plecos
1 pair nijsseni

Should i heavily plant it? Will they settle down and overcome the shyness (only been in the tank 24 hours)? Also i want to add more nijsseni, could i add another pair, or should i stick to 1 big harem? If so how many females? Is it wise to add another male? Or should i add another type of apisto? Also will dither fish help? Cardinals, corydoras etc?

 

[G_Sharky]

just wait until they settled down, I don't have nijsseni(i wanna get one though), but when I got my rams they did the same thing....and I had them for almost 5 months now and they are thriving....BTW how much did you pay for the pair, they are pretty expensive on my LFS, they go for about $40 canadian currency for a pair...

 

[semper fi]

i would be careful about overcrowding this tank with discus in it. discus are prone to sickness. need water changes every other day to stay healthy. by the dimensions of your tank i am guesstimating it to be about 60 gallons. with the amount of fish you already have in there, i would say you are over the limits and need to possibly move the discus.

 

[ryan]

Good find, these Apistos are a very nice fish. IME though the female does tend to be more aggressive than the male so I found that I could only keep one pair per tank. You may get away with a pair of a different species of Apistogramma though, like Hongsloi? However, with nine Discus I would say you are quite over stocked and unless you have some serious filtration adding more fish could be a problem.