The mix of fish is all wrong plus could be male heavy I work with 1m to many female or pairs but stick to one lake ie Lakemalawi.
At my wits end with aggression...
- Thread starter Dark Rose
- Start date
Well I'd assume it's male heavy as it should definitely be all male now... which was the intention from the start.
The mix may be off, I'd pretty much had my mind set on an all peacock tank and went on some bad advice from a "cichlid expert" at a specialty fish store when I got my initial stock.
He told me that peacocks and Haps and mbuna that were captive bred and raised all together would get along just fine. Which is the reason most of the mbuna I have got in there to begin with...
Sent from my SM-N900V using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
for the most part they do. i have the same mix as you do and have had the same issues untill i made the changes i put up earlier. it has been a few months now and everything is as peaceful as can be. not one fish in my tank has a nipped fin. i even have some demasoni in there and i have heard from many sources that they are little devils.
I kept and bred Malawi cichlids for years and here's a few observations...
You also had it right above when you said something about them starting to flex their muscles. What you see in a juvie tank is not what you'll see as they get some size and/or become sexually mature, it's just a whole different thing, but it fools a lot of people because they put mixed Malawis together when small, without much trouble for however long, then they're surprised when they suddenly start killing each other.
Whoever said above that it doesn't help to remove the weakest fish pretty much had it right. An exception is when you have two males of a particular type, two peacocks for example, that don't like each other because of being the same or a closely related species and seeing each other as rivals. Quite often one is going to end up dead if you don't separate them and it may not matter which one you remove. But it's a different scenario when one is simply overly aggressive and is targeting random fish. Then you need to move the bully, all the more so if it's targeting more than one fish, or one individual after another.
Whoever said you need more fish is probably right. Many to most Malawis do better in a crowded tank, including peacocks and a lot of hap species, not just mbuna. An exception can be a species tank, which depends on species, male/female ratio, etc. The number of Malawis you can or should keep together would surprise a lot of people. The tricky thing is you have some larger species (Nimbochromis, Cyrtocara, Dimidiochromis if you'd kept him), so keeping enough to diffuse aggression pre-adult can be too much once they're full grown...
Which leads me to this point-- getting a peaceful Malawi tank often takes ongoing tinkering, getting the right mix of species or individuals, making changes when one or another fish gets too aggressive, etc. To have them crowded enough to diffuse aggression as juvies you may have to adjust the numbers down as they grow or reach max size. Also, you can't always count on a tank that is peaceful today-- or has been peaceful for months-- staying that way. Things can change suddenly, since a fish can undergo sudden hormonal changes that can completely change their behavior. This can happen due to the onset of breeding age OR due to changes in social status. In other words, the same fish that was mild when younger and/or when another fish was bossing the tank can suddenly become nasty with size or when that dominant fish is gone. Overall a bigger tank gives you better odds, but you can't always expect to plan a Malawi tank and have it work as planned; with Malawis you need to be ready to adjust according to circumstances. Most Malawi species, even those profiled as 'peaceful', can have individuals that are psycho aggressive. Also, aggression is often relative to what else is in the tank-- a peaceful individual in one tank with one set of tankmates can turn nasty with another set of tankmates.
...Your tropheus may be a potential problem with haps and peacocks. Tropheus are hyper and aggressive by nature-- one way to look at it is think of Malawi pseudotropheus as already aggressive, then realize these are not 'psuedo' tropheus, they're real tropheus. They prefer to be in good sized groups and can be unpredictable as individuals in a cichlid community.
Already a long post, doesn't cover everything, but some basics that might help.
You're right, bad advice. Some mbuna species will sometimes work with haps and peacocks, but mostly the milder species-- and then it depends on the individual fish and setup-- and you have to remember that some so-called less aggressive mbuna may be less aggressive only compared to some of the more psycho mbuna. They can still be pretty nuts for an average hap or peacock. In any case, put the wrong species together and they don't care whether they were raised together.
You also had it right above when you said something about them starting to flex their muscles. What you see in a juvie tank is not what you'll see as they get some size and/or become sexually mature, it's just a whole different thing, but it fools a lot of people because they put mixed Malawis together when small, without much trouble for however long, then they're surprised when they suddenly start killing each other.
Whoever said above that it doesn't help to remove the weakest fish pretty much had it right. An exception is when you have two males of a particular type, two peacocks for example, that don't like each other because of being the same or a closely related species and seeing each other as rivals. Quite often one is going to end up dead if you don't separate them and it may not matter which one you remove. But it's a different scenario when one is simply overly aggressive and is targeting random fish. Then you need to move the bully, all the more so if it's targeting more than one fish, or one individual after another.
Whoever said you need more fish is probably right. Many to most Malawis do better in a crowded tank, including peacocks and a lot of hap species, not just mbuna. An exception can be a species tank, which depends on species, male/female ratio, etc. The number of Malawis you can or should keep together would surprise a lot of people. The tricky thing is you have some larger species (Nimbochromis, Cyrtocara, Dimidiochromis if you'd kept him), so keeping enough to diffuse aggression pre-adult can be too much once they're full grown...
Which leads me to this point-- getting a peaceful Malawi tank often takes ongoing tinkering, getting the right mix of species or individuals, making changes when one or another fish gets too aggressive, etc. To have them crowded enough to diffuse aggression as juvies you may have to adjust the numbers down as they grow or reach max size. Also, you can't always count on a tank that is peaceful today-- or has been peaceful for months-- staying that way. Things can change suddenly, since a fish can undergo sudden hormonal changes that can completely change their behavior. This can happen due to the onset of breeding age OR due to changes in social status. In other words, the same fish that was mild when younger and/or when another fish was bossing the tank can suddenly become nasty with size or when that dominant fish is gone. Overall a bigger tank gives you better odds, but you can't always expect to plan a Malawi tank and have it work as planned; with Malawis you need to be ready to adjust according to circumstances. Most Malawi species, even those profiled as 'peaceful', can have individuals that are psycho aggressive. Also, aggression is often relative to what else is in the tank-- a peaceful individual in one tank with one set of tankmates can turn nasty with another set of tankmates.
...Your tropheus may be a potential problem with haps and peacocks. Tropheus are hyper and aggressive by nature-- one way to look at it is think of Malawi pseudotropheus as already aggressive, then realize these are not 'psuedo' tropheus, they're real tropheus. They prefer to be in good sized groups and can be unpredictable as individuals in a cichlid community.
Already a long post, doesn't cover everything, but some basics that might help.
Well it wasn't until I did more research and got on here and checked things out that I realized I'd probably gotten some bad advice (along with misidentified fish).
I'm hoping possibly this weekend to drive a bit and find a couple more peacocks (of the species I actually wanted) large enough to get along in my tank and maybe help diffuse things.
Sent from my SM-N900V using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
I'm hoping possibly this weekend to drive a bit and find a couple more peacocks (of the species I actually wanted) large enough to get along in my tank and maybe help diffuse things.
Sent from my SM-N900V using MonsterAquariaNetwork App
You sir are a beautiful human being!
"At my wits end with aggression"
I think you may have pushed him further away from his wits end. I think the OP was (as I and many other hobbyists) frustrated with constantly having to worry about the tank dynamic and thinking that they had completely screwed up. I forgot to mention that when I had my mixed tank I chose all the fish species carefully and did not buy anything I couldn`t ID. I always find that the zebra cichlids are somewhat more predictable in terms of aggression than the mindless killers that are Melanchromis. I always used to stock a whole bunch of Zebras at any given time because they are tough, like large ratios and are always a good target fish.
When I did start putting melanchromis and other more aggressive Mbuna into the mix in the later tank, things blew up. I`m not saying don`t keep those species, just that you should probably have a list of species that you really want, and then see what is absolutely not compatible with them.
Thanks... 
Yeah, tried melanochromis once in my early days with Malawis, back when I was picking out whatever I thought looked good at the lfs-- couple days later I was trading them in for something else. OK in the right tank with other psycho mbuna, maybe, but not in the tank I was doing.
Yeah, tried melanochromis once in my early days with Malawis, back when I was picking out whatever I thought looked good at the lfs-- couple days later I was trading them in for something else. OK in the right tank with other psycho mbuna, maybe, but not in the tank I was doing.
