Luck ran out in the blue orchid tank

[hollyfish2000]

After two years of harmony in my 45 gallon blue orchid tank someone beat up the big male today. This was the tank with three fully colored up males and five females and zero aggression or issues of any kind. Today someone kicked the crap out of the big guy. He's got tattered fins, a cloudy eye, bad color and missing scales. I've moved him to the 20 gallon BN tank for now. The water is clean and no one is there to mess with him. Not sure if he'll make it or not .... I"m bummed. This was my perfect tank.

 

[hollyfish2000]

He was upside down this morning and I euthanized him. This sucks . . .

I may have inadvertently caused this. I put in a new very large plastic plant to hide one of the filter intakes and I wonder if that suddenly took away valuable space and caused the aggression. No aggression between the other two males today . . . I guess that's the good news.

 

[Spine]

Sorry to hear that Holly. They are really good looking fish it's a good thing you still have the rest of the group.

 

[Tony]

Holly - I'm really sorry about your guy. But don't fret - you've done nothing wrong.

I've bred 6 different groups of peacock species/varieties (lemon jakes, ruby reds, maylandi, Otter Point jakes, bengas and Ngara Stuartgranti). These guys pretty much all run the range of aggression for peacocks. However, there is not one of these species that I have not had to remove a male or lost a male due to aggression at some point.

Hopefully, your two remaining males will reach a balance and be alright with each other. Keep an eye on the submale and make sure he isn't getting beaten on. Things will be fine.

 

[dogofwar]

What Tony said. You didn't do anything wrong. Sometimes boys can be rough on each other....

Take care,
Matt

 

[hollyfish2000]

My sense it that the attacker actually was the submale. Yes, I'm keeping an eye on him. . .

 

[verbal]

Sorry to hear about your loss.

You might want to look closely at your females. It would not surprise me at all if one or more are holding. I have noticed a pretty strong correlation between breeding and aggression related fatalities.

 

[hollyfish2000]

I had wondered the same thing, but none of the females are holding, and none have been holding for quite some time. I've never had much breeding activity in this tank and no fry that made it past a day. (there are petricola in there, too)

 

[Tony]

I had wondered the same thing, but none of the females are holding, and none have been holding for quite some time. I've never had much breeding activity in this tank and no fry that made it past a day. (there are petricola in there, too)

Holly,

My maylandi fry, which are very similar to yours, are extremely small when first free-swimming. Probably 1/2-2/3 the TL of other peacocks and about 1/3 the mass of the others. Even in a tumbler then breeder net, mortality rates are much higher than any other Malawi cichlid I've bred. They start out small and grow slowly. If you miss a daily feeding any time in the first 4 weeks, you lose 25% of them.

I successfully bred a few batches, but have slowed down. After the frustration of losing 3-4 batches for no good reason, I've gotten to the point that I don't even bother pulling females anymore. If there was more interest, I'd give it a shot, but the last batch I had sat around until the little males were practically full color and I ended up giving them to my sister.

With other peacocks, you have a few stray fry make it out of a hundred. Predation aside, I don't think that they can get enough food to survive in the breeder tank.

Dang - reread this and I sound like a pooper.... Sorry it's the truth. What I mean by it is again, you're not really doing anything wrong with these guys - they're just a pain to breed - by Malawi standards at least.

 

[hollyfish2000]

I think females have only held maybe three or four times in two years -- and more than once I watched a female open her mouth to eat and see eggs floating out. So they didn't quite get the concept of hooollllddding. As far as I can tell, I only had one successful spit and saw two little fry. I had to leave for work, so I built them a fry pile and hoped for the best. I planned to rescue them when I got home. Instead, the fry pile was completely savaged and no babies anywhere. I think it's too small of a tank without many places to hide and those pesky catfish too predatory.

My ruby red tank is so much the opposite -- all six females holding within weeks. So far, two have spit but I've only been able to spot one fry. I haven't seen him lately. I have built impressive piles of rocks for successive spits, though. This tank has significantly more hiding places, so maybe they will have more luck.