Very agressive behaviour

[Poe]

As I said in the other messagge Yesterday I bought 2 trios of apistos (viejitas II and pandurini) I put them in a 75 gallon tank with a trio of agassizii and a couple of cacatuoides.

The older inhabitant developed an agressive behaviour towards the new apistos. They are in a corner of the tank in the middle of some rocks, with no room. I achived to catch the cacatuoides but the agassizi is even worse.

Mi plan is to catch both of them and put them in a tank (I still don´t have but I dont mind to buy because I will use it for the fry) to see if the new ones left the corner, start to eat, to explore the rest of the tank.

I want to keep them all together in the 75 gallon tank, I think is not small for them. Right now I dont have it very planted. But in a few days I´ll put some new plants and rocks, this I know will help, but the first thing is that they need to left the corner. Do you think is a good idea to separate the males for a while?
I know the right thing would be to have a tank for each especie but....b sometimes you can´t do what you want

Any idea?

 

[Neil]

All of those fish can be territorial and aggressive. If you were puttin all young fish in the tank at the same time, it would help. But with adults already established in the tank, I think that there is going to continue to be problems. The cacatuoides and panduro are in the same group and probably shouldn't be in there together.
If I were you I would take out all the established fish for a few days and put a lot of structure in the tank, then put the aggies back in. Find another (maybe 10g breeding) tank for the cacatuoides. But be prepared to watch for continuing aggression. Putting several species in, even a 75g, is a hit or miss proposition! Good luck. Neil

 

[DigitalBoy]

sorry to hear about that

I agree with Neil. From my own experience I could say that even heavily planted aquarium won't always help. Watch out for your males - things can get really bad.

 

[Poe]

I watch them carefully everyday several times.
I think things are getting better. At least the new ones are starting to appear very often in one corner of the tank. The cacatuoides is not so agressive with them. He still runs behind them, but not continuously and they are able to eat by themselves. I dont need to put red larvae into the net to provide them a peacefull place to eat. well......errrr just only with the big pandurini, but he also goes for a "swin" sometimes. He is not always in the corner.


I´ll follow your pieces of advice and i´ll try to put agassiziis or cacatuoides in the breeder tank for a while. But I´ll have to take out the borellis opal ).....
Well I´ll think about it first

Regards