Frontosa Q

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toehead11183

toehead11183

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Dec 4, 2006
3,538
21
68
Memphis, tn
i set up a 29g african tank for my wife and she had a small 1" frontosa in there. soon after, maybe a month, i got my colony of 6 for my 150g. about a month after i got mine we broke her tank down and put her front in with mine. it is 6 months later and my group still has not accepted her front. they drive hers away from the group and pick on it.

will they ever accept hers into ther group?
 
Regional front variants seldom intermix unless raised together from fry. You could always try to break up the original territorial boundaries. Next water change/gravel wash redecorate the tank by relocating every rock, stick, and retexture the gravel. It helps to take away large markers and replace them with new ones (swap large rocks with other tanks. This should be enough to force all inhabitants to restructure their territorial boundaries around the current numbers of fish.

This doesn't work all the time. But, it worked in getting my Samazi group to be accepted into the Maswa tank.
 
that didnt work. a few weeks ago i removed all the rocks and replaced them with smoother rocks. it didn't help. im switching to sand next weeks. maybe that will help. i'll add sand and rearrange rocks again.
 
Do you have any pots, caves, hioding spots for them or are they all trying for one spot? I would try to redo the tank like oddball said.....sand is nice I think it will help a complete new tank might change everything......You can also black them out after the change such as no lights and covered up for 2 days.....calms them all down........I do that with new fronts I get to introduce new females to per established colonies...
 
they have to rock piles to hide in and a few other holey rocks along the back of the tank. space is availible but they never hide in them. the other tangs and loaches play in them.

150 tank 002.jpg

M30 002.jpg
 
Hmmm, your set up is pretty good.....maybe more larger rocks, but with them all being juvi burundis I cant see them being very nasty to one fish....maybe its another male and the others dont like....
 
Some larger cave-like structures may help...in my opinion, your fronts will eventually grow too large to utilize your rocks for hiding and refuge purposes.
 
What I've done before is during a water change I pulled all the Frontosas out of the tank, re-arrange all the rocks and reset all territories and then re-introduce the colony. Maybe even aquire a couple more frontosas (same variant of course) and introduce those at the same time.... this way it's not just one new kid on the block but a group. A new pecking order will have to be formed to est. an Alpha male. In my opinion you need a few more anyway to get a nice ratio of male to females in your colony so this would be the right time.
 
i cant afford any new fish...baby due in 9 weeks. i promised wifey no more fish for a while. the rocks arent really for the fronts. it for the 1-1.5" tangs i have in there to hid in. i'm still lookin for some large chunks of holey rock in the memphis area. just haven't found any nice rocks that i can afford. the fronts can easily fit into the rocks i have right now. i'm fixin to take fish and all out of the tank for a few days to do a makeover. hope they'll get along after i put them back.

thanks for the help guy (and girls)
 
clay pots or PVC tubing elbows.....its the cheaper route if you cant afford the holey rock......I got mine at a deal cause tehy had it miss labeld as limestone at .89 haha....lets say they didnt have any left haha
 
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