How to induce dominant females to spawn

[Rol&Jas]

We have lost half of our maingano colony due to the heat last summer. Unfortunately, we have also lost our breeding male. A month later, we found someone who sold us 2 nice bigger males. When we have introduced them to our colony they were getting bashed even by much smaller females. Slowly they climbed up in the hierarchy and were able to spawn with smaller females. Last month they succeeded to spawn with one of the bigger females too. However one of our original females was as big as the 2 males and they could not subdue her, she was occupying one corner of the tank and was fighting off any intruders including the males. We thought that this female will never spawn, so we separated her in a transparent floating container with the purpose to sell her to a shop as a display fish. She was in a container for already 4 days without feeding and in her absence the males spawned with 3 females. On day 4 we thought we give her another chance and introduced her to the colony again as she was weaker now the males could approach her and spawned with her straight after we released her. We couldn't beleive that as soon as she was out of the container her breeding tube started to come down.

We had problems with dominant females whenever we lost a breeding male in the past. If the new male is not an overly aggessive one and if you introduce him to an established tank that has similar sized females in it, it is very likely that the females will chase the male around and not vice versa. So it is better if you either take out the dominant females until the male gets established and get his confidence up with the girls

[Aquaman]

Great piece of info Roland.

THanks for sharing.

Cheers

Richard

[Gav]

i had a similar problem to Roland's when joining two colonies of kingsizei (6 fish in each). The new male to the tank was bigger and tougher than the male currently in the tank and soon beat up the smaller male. all was fine until the two dominant females (which had previously spawned with the smaller male) decided to go troppo. I ripped them both out of the tank to settle things down and the males both were fine, each occupying one end of the tank. when i re-introduced the two females after two days, spawning was virtually immediate. so its not only just when you add new males, sometimes an existing male can have troubles with big nasty girls.