P Taeniatus issue

[tillbarnem]

Hi everyone. I'm starting to notice a problem I hope you can help with. I had raised some P Taeniatus Wouri fry to adulthood and kept a female. I transferred her back to my main tank about 6 months ago and she was doing very well. My male had died and I recently purchased a male. This was about a month ago. He is doing very well. I noticed a couple of days ago that he seemed to be getting aggressive toward her and she now seems to be a little gunshy of him. She is hanging out in some plants and is still eating but appears to be a little afraid. I only have one other tank currently viable for this purpose but I have A Hognei fry in there and they are too small for me to put her in. Any ideas? Thanks

 

[tjudy]

They need to be separated. When a male is bullying a female to the point where she has to hide up in a corner it is an indication that she cannot get away from him. If separating her, or him, into a different tank is not possible, then an in-tank divider or a net breeder (or similar container) will have to do. If the goal is to get them comfortable with each other I suggest isolating the male and letting the female have the run of the tank. That will make her the queen of the space and put her in a position of dominance for a while when the male is introduced.

Another option in to load up the tank with hiding places and then add a few female P. pulcher to attract the male's attention. With other fish to chase he will be less rough on the female Wouri. Plus the presence of the female P. pulcher will trigger an territorial response in the female Wouri and help to make her more aggressive also.

 

[tillbarnem]

Ted, I don't think the pulcher idea will work because I don't want to keep them. If I put the male in a breeding net, how big of a net do I need? He obviously won't be very happy there but this seems like the best solution. How long do I, or can I, keep him there? Jeff

 

[Hawkeyes]

I had the same problem with my WC P. Taeniatus Makoure. Dropped in a female pulcher and things got better almost instantly. It will bring them closer together. Now they're inseperable. I understand if you just plain don't want to keep a pulcher, but it's better than having to constantly seperate them or having to find another female.

Aron

 

[tillbarnem]

Well, I threw a couple of female pulcher's in last night and didn't see a whole lot of improvement yet. The females were not large yet. Maybe I'll see some gain, today.

 

[bigbird]

what I also find very usefull is too remove all of the fish from the tank. redesign the whole structures , rocks , line of sight etc, make sure that you get 2 or 3 separate areas as a boundary and then reintroduce all fish at once.
then they normally will sort each other out. I also however agree that a female should not be bullied. Anyway that always helps me. cheers jk

 

[wethumbs]

I had the same problem with my Wouri pair. After removing the frys from a previous spawn and rearranging the tank. The female became aggressive toward the male. Eventually, the male got pissed and chased the female all over the tank. Since I house another pair of taeniatus in an adjacent tank, I simply removed the partition between the two tanks. Within minutes, the fighting and chasing stopped. They became an inseparable pair again. I put the partition back on and left a small gap so they could still see over to the other pair for a few more days.

I also used dither fish in the tank from time to time but found taeniatus being too rough on them, even killed a blue emperor tetra (Inpaichthys kerri) male I had. I lost my remaining male kerri when he decided to leap over to the adjacent tank where the females were and missed. But that's a non cichlid related story.