Green Terror Harem?
- Thread starter RLHam3
- Start date
I've had a breeding trio with this species (wish I had held onto them). I have a similar situation with my bahias (brasiliensis) which, regardless of what anyone else says, I find quite similar in several ways. You've got a great looking young male there!
thank you! he was a lot drabber at the petstore when i got him, barely had any green spangles. But i guess good diet(with spirulina), and having other males to compete with really made his colors come out fast. They're even more pronounced now, because i think they they may be getting ready for another batch of eggs. I'll try to put pics up when that happens. I hope they'll stay together as a trio for it!
I think that this behavoir is really interesting so i think that i'm going to keep updating this thread just in case anyone else also think that. So far the trio has bred 3 times in all. The male is around 4" and the females are both a little over 2". The babies slowly thin out (predation from tankmates) but once there are 25 or so left the mother doesn't have a hard time leeping track of them al and casualties decrease.
the trio has a very interesing dynamic. The females have each chosen a back corner of the tank as territory and as long as the other female doesn't come too close, they rarely show aggression to any other fish besides the male. The male NEVER shows aggression back though. He barely even shows aggression when the bichir comes close to a female or swarm of babies. He just patrols both halfs of the tank all day long.
He's not really involved with the parenting of the fry and i've never actually seen him interact with any fry. The most interesting breeding bahvoir I have observed has actually been between the 2 females.
One day one will have a cloud of hundreds of fry around her and the other mother will only have 50 or so. Then later in the day or the next day, the numbers will be reversed and the other mother will have the largest swarm. This makes me think that they group their fry as a collective school and the fry trade off mothers. I've never actually seen any fry "switching sides" but its the only solution i can think of (i watched for a long time to make sure that one group hadn't just been in hiding).
Well bad news, the trio "broke up" a few weeks ago. :-( I went out of town for the weekend and when I got back one of the females was pretty beat up and hiding so i removed her. The remaining two are still a pair, but they're pretty strange. There's already a huge size difference. He's around 4" and she's barely over 2".(so he's got about 3 times more bulk than her) But there's no question that she's in command right now. She'll bite at him if he eats food that's near her and she'll even chase him away from the eggs sometimes. He doesn't do a thing, and just retreats and continues to patrol the tank.
O well, it was fun while it lasted. Maybe next time I'll be able to move them to a larger tank sooner.
O well, it was fun while it lasted. Maybe next time I'll be able to move them to a larger tank sooner.
