About a year ago I bought 4 baby Lyonsi from Jeff rapps. I was hoping to get a pair. They have grown a lot. My biggest is about 7 or 8 inches who I think is a male and 2 other fish that are about 5. And one is still very small. They are in a 180 6×2×2 tank with a silver dollar a jack Dempsey and a fire mouth. The lyonsi get bullied and the Dempsey and fire mouth. Not sure why they get pushed around so badly. The fire mouth is small like 4 inches. And the jack Dempsey runs the tank he's about 7 inches. If I want a pair should I remove the jack and fire mouth? Should I move the smallest lyonsi to its own tank to try and but size on it? And none of the fish are getting beat up to badly just lots of chasing. Hope this made sense srrry for the long read
Kinda a problem
- Thread starter Garshark
- Start date
IF your goal is to get a pair then yes, certainly remove the dempsey and possiby the firemouth if they are causing problems with your lyonsi
I was hoping for them to pair off then move the pair to a separate tank. Should I take what I think is a male and female and put them in there own tank now? Even though they arnt full grown or showing breefing behavior should I move them?
Well not necessarily, if they haven't paired off, they could just kill eachother. Keep all of them in the same tank. Alone. Or maybe with some dithers, something they can b the boss of though. You want each female to have a choice of males and visa versa, and then once they pair off, move them. But just because you put s female and a male together doesn't mean they will breed, they could just as easily kill eachother.
In a 180 I can see how you would want more than a pair in there to fill it out, but I'd recommend having just them (and dither) and let them pair naturally. I'm actually doing the exact same. I have 7 juvie lyonsi with 5 tiger silver dollars and a royal pleco, all in my 125. They're all small atm but I plan to have a pair form and then regime the rest.
This is what I tried with 4 lyonsi and they absolutely hate each other, would chase each other to death if I let them, had to lose 1 of them to the lfs as it was bullied bad, I've had to add other mild cichlids to the tank to stop the hating, lol, they still don't like ech other but don't chase each other as much now as there's other tank mates to watch. I find they are all getting on fine at the moment but I would love to get a pair of lyonsi out the remaining 3. As and when and if they do I'll remove the rest of the residents.
Good luck. Also jds are mean and can be v nasty
Good luck. Also jds are mean and can be v nasty
Oh that's good. My lyonsi only mean and nasty to each other tho for some reason. I have a very small firemouth also aswell as 13 corys and some small veijas and they don't bother them.