Introducing new male Cac going badly

[Seb]

Hi all

My big male apistogramma cacatuoides sunburst recently died of old age, leaving his one female partner, now alone in an 80L tank. Six months ago, his original partner died, so I replaced her with his current female, which has produced a couple of spawns over the last few months (now all sold or in seperate tanks) and been pretty happy.

As I want to keep breeding my apistos, I introduced my male's eldest son (now around 1 inch and pretty much mature, but slightly smaller than the female) to the female apisto, however it hasnt gone amazingly. The second I put his bag in she started tail flicking and getting pretty excited, good sign I thought. When I put him in, it was more tail flicking from both of them, which in my case usually leads to eggs. But then she stated to chase him and getting really aggressive. Whenever he went close to her she either lost all her colour and swam away terrified or attaced him!! So I had to take him out back to hism old tank.

Anyone ever seen this sort of behavior or know what to do?

 

[Seb]

anyone know?

 

[Apistt_ed]

Hello seb,

In this situation, it is most likely that the female has already established her territory boundaries in the tank (being the WHOLE TANK)and when you introduced the young male, he hasn't been acquainted to that. She's already made the tank her home when she was originally in there with your first male, and introducing the young male would result in aggression because he's coming into her home and she's defending it and at one inch he should be ready to take on breeding but may be overwhelmed with her defending it.

The best thing to do is to change the decor of the tank. Move main territorial decor (plants, drift wood, caves, etc.) around so they'd have to rework the territorial boundaries. If the aggression continues, pull them both out of the tank and introduce the male in first for a few days with her hanging in a bag at the top of the tank for a few days (3 or so) and this gives the male a chance to establish his place in the tank and then introduce her back into the tank and it shouldn't be as bad in there. best luck. cheers.


john