Wild festae pair

[sbrady5pts]

My wild festae from TUIC finally paired off and spawned. This has been two of the more difficult fish I have ever worked with to get to pair off, and need some help from the group.

The pair has been wildly abusive towards each other since they were young. Female used to beat the male then the male tried to kill her. I have had to constantly separate them and reintroduce with new fish.
Even now with the eggs they are much more aggressive towards each other than any fish I have seen. If one of them leaves the cave with the eggs the other will harass them to get back in with some aggressive bites.

Will they out grow this behavior?
Is there a risk of an implosion coming?

I’ll get some pictures tomorrow

 

[Jexnell]

Best thing to do with these very aggressive cichlids is to breed thru a divider.
Get what called light diffuser panel and then cut to fit the tank. Put a notch in the bottom for like a plate to fit. She can lay on one side of the plate, you spin it so he can fertilize the eggs.

You can see here I was introducing new females to my male.

 

[Jexnell]

Another tip if the female is significantly smaller than the male, you can make a hole in the diffuser panel where she can get thru, but not the bigger male. So she can be with him but also be able to get away from aggression.

 

[sbrady5pts]

Unfortunately the female and male are basically the exact same size. I was hoping to avoid the divider long term

 

[Crazylegs78]

Sounds familiar. I got tired of dealing with them, so this is how I keep them now.

 

[sbrady5pts]

I left this post hanging so I figured I would share an update.
The eggs hatched and shortly after growing into free swimming fry I removed the other fish from the tank and as soon as I did that the male almost killed the female.

I added the other Festae back in aweek or two later and the pair is good. It’s almost like they need other Festae in the tank too

 

[duanes]

I also allow certain estranged pairs to spawn divided within the same tank.

I try to put the rock for eggs and female down water current flow from the male.
For especially robust cichlid the divider must have heavy rocks to hold in place, and be constructed with enough bracing vertically,
and notched to wedge in the tank rim..
,