Melanura male to female ratio question

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FishKing5

FishKing5

Aimara
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Oct 24, 2013
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I know generally you should have about 1 male to 3 females. I have 1 for sure male and believe to have 4 other females. I'm fairly confident that he will be pairing up with the larger female of my group, they're just becoming sub adult size for it growing fast. My for sure male is the boss of the whole tank and is stunning.

Basically my question is would it be alright to add 2 more males to the group or could /should I add just 1 male and 1 other female. I'm wanting to get 2 melanura belize red heads to add with my group of lago peten and would ideally like to get 2 males but am fine with adding 1 male and 1 female. They will be the same size as the ones I have right now. I'd like to create pairs and not have aggression issues.

Thanks for any help.

duanes duanes
 
Melanurum are pair bonding fish.

Grow out the group until there's a pair develops (on its own). Not sure of the size of the tank but unless it's huge, you're going to have problems with additional conspecifics once a pair forms and spawns...

One approach that I've used to keep pairs from beating on each other is to have another same or similar fish behind a divider in the breeding tank. The pair spends energy "guarding" the fry against the other fish..and the other fish both won't get torn apart and eat the fry.

One other thing: I wouldn't mix variants of melanurum in the same tank. They were different species not long ago. And could be again. Offspring that are mixes of them would lose the distinctive character of either.

Matt
 
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There is no guarantee that the fish you want to pair up will. You could end up with pairs from different catch locations. I would stick to the one strain and if your tank is big enough try a harem.
 
dan518 said:
There is no guarantee that the fish you want to pair up will. You could end up with pairs from different catch locations. I would stick to the one strain and if your tank is big enough try a harem.
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I'm not really focused on breeding and getting pairs, more just focused on having a tank that won't get too crazy. I'd like a pair or two just to experience the beauty of seeing the pairs do their things. If I had mixed breeding from different catch locations, it wouldn't bother me either. Going more for a show tank over breeding but if breeding happens then that's fine. I really like both the belize and Lago peten strain though
 
This is a community tank with black belts in it as well in a 300 gallon tank. Even have a Argentea in there. I can't see adding a male and female or two males to the tank as juvies would be a huge problem right?
 
T
FishKing5 said:
This is a community tank with black belts in it as well in a 300 gallon tank. Even have a Argentea in there. I can't see adding a male and female or two males to the tank as juvies would be a huge problem right?
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Try it and see how it goes, there is no fixed rules behind stocking, just make sure you have a spare tank so you can swap and change until you get a workable community.
 
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