julie bashing female

[butters]

hiya need help with my julie transcriptus.breeding pair with lots of fry in different terms of development.tank is 3x2x2. no other fish in tank .i think he just keeps harrasing her because he wants to breed and she wants nothing to do with him.i have the same problem in another community tank,with lelupis ,but she just moved her territory instead being a bigger tank.thinking of putting in some other fish to distract??will tjis work ? any info much appreciated. thanx

[CThompson]

It has been my experience with Julie species, and with leleupi, that once the female (larger fish) starts hitting on the smaller fish, if the smaller male doesn’t get out of the way, or have some way to “turn off” the aggression directed at him, he will be killed.

I have noticed this can happen if the larger fish wants to breed, and doesn’t get cooperation from the smaller fish, and the smaller fish can’t escape these attentions. I have also seen this happen if one removes ALL the babies. It seems the larger fish blames the smaller fish, and beats the crap out of it. If the tank is too small, or there is not enough places for the smaller fish to escape, it WILL be killed. Make no mistake, he will be killed.

Adding more fish to the equation may help, it may not. I know the often used wisdom in the case of aggression with Africans is to add more fish to the equation to lessen the impact from any given fish, but in this case, you have a tank with babies at varying sizes, you may be giving the new fish a source of live food…. If the smaller male is still inside their territorial range, and doesn’t have enough sense get the heck out, or at the least, hide, it may still be attached/killed.

A 3 by 2 by 2 is a good sized tank, and will help the boy from being killed, but if their breeding territory is in the middle of the tank, you have in essence a tank that is only 1.5 by 2 by 2. If their breeding place is inside a movable object, such as a flower pot or group of stones, and it is situated in the middle of the tank, try moving it to the back left or right corner, to allow the smaller fish more room to get out of harms way.

I wonder that in nature when and if this happens if the harassed fish would just up and leave. Being as it is in our tanks the fish can’t do this - hence the real problem.

Craig

[Willy Wombat]

I currently have 5 julies in a 4*2*2 tank.

2 pairs that live at either end of the tank and one rouge male who lives behind the filter intake pipe. When they are breeding they can be very fierce towards each other. As a consequene i have a dominant breeding pair that always have heaps of fry and a pair that produces very few. The rouge male gets beaten up a lot. Poor chap.

Cheers

WW

[Andrew]

This is typical of all substrate spawners... The pair bond can remain strong for many years, then something can change it all without notice. Your best bet is to separate the pair for a time. Let the battered one recover, then re-introduce them under supervision. Eventually, you will start to get an idea whether the change is a temporary case of frigidity - or a permanent case of fishy domestic violence...lol

Cheers,

Andrew.

[poxboy]

I had the same problem with my dickfeldi. The female was nearly twice the size of the male and really giving him a hard time, though she didn't seem to care about the 80 or so juviniles in the tank with them. I solved the problem by stacking heaps of those small thin red slate type rocks ( from St George ) into box type formations throughout the tank. Once he had somewhere better to hide, she stopped harrasing him almost imediately. Hope this helps.

Bretto.

[YeW]

I put lots of terracotta pots (5-6) in a 2' tank. Cut small entrance holes in the pots - face the entrances in different direction and that should solve the troubles.

adding floating ag pipe also works as a "last retreat"

HTH -