New Apistos

aj2494

aj2494

R.I.P. Guys
Jul 31, 2008
846
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Buffalo, New York
I have had a pair of fire red agassizii for a few months with no aggression problems in my 29. There are other fish, but just look in my signature if you really need to know. The problem is I added a pair of trifasciatas yesterday, and my aggies are not very happy, and will not leave the tri's alone. They really haven't done any damage, and they don't dart around the tank, but if the aggies see them, they drift over and just nip. I have 2 terracotta pots and a breeding egg (just a dark clay egg with a small hole in it) in the tank, so they aren't fighting over caves. The problem is neither want to pick a side to live in. I rearranged the tank before I added the tri's, like I always do, but I just can't seem to curb the aggression. Anybody have any ideas?
 
First off I'm jealous of your fish.

Sometimes this has happend to me when i introduce a new cichlid into the tank. They are trying to establish a new higharche. I wouldn't bee too worried about it they are just testing one another and figuring out who will be the new alpha. I wouldn't do anything but it this continues for a week or one of the apistos get's damaged then i would try to re arrange the tank once more. And see if that helps at all.
 
Oh, they have a higharche. The aggies definitely win. And thank you. I'm lucky enough that, even though I absolutely hate this LFS, it carries quite a few rarities.
 
Trifasciatas are harem breeders which may be part of the problem. The aggies are not harem breeders and were there first, so they first of all think of the whole tank as theirs and second of all your male aggie can not understand why the male trifasciatas wants his woman too.
 
There were no actions that lead up to this. As soon as the male aggie saw the tri, he went after him. All apistos will breed in a harem, so I know that's not a problem.

I know that the aggies think the whole tank is theirs. That is what I was asking about changing.
 
I am sorry, that is what I get for skimming. Really, your choices are limited. One is to leave it be and hope they work it out. Sometimes it is just establishing a new pecking order when anything is added to a tank. Two, try to keep rearranging with new line of sight breaks and hope it eventually works. Three, set up another tank.
 
It's no problem. It is a very complex genus behavior-wise. I just netted the male aggie into a breeder net. I am hoping that without the male, the tri's can get a foothold on some territory. I left eh female aggie in cause she's pretty small and can't really do much harm. I'll have to get pics of them after I figure this out.

And jb-ny, thanks for the angry aggies :grinyes:
 
best way ,so i was told when adding apisto's is to turn the lights of keep em off and then swirl the sand about to cloud the tank a bit and move some decor around this puts in new bounders for the fish to make there own
 
Check out my original post. And for those who are interested, I had the aggies in a breeding net for about 2 weeks (seems long, I know), and now everything is fine. The tris breed once, but nobody's doing anything right now.
 
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