spencer1;1531857; said:
...ONE OF THE LABS SEEMS TO BE PICKED ON BY ONE OF THE OTHER LABS.I THOUGHT THEY WERE PEACEFULL FISH... ANY IDEAS TO SOLVE IT
For the record, yellow labs AREN'T peaceful fish. They're mildly aggressive by MBUNA standards. That means they most likely will avoid confrontations with more aggressive mbuna species but will have no qualms being aggressive among themselves, especially when multiple male yellow labs are involved.
Compared to my other mbuna species, full grown fully matured male yellow labs, in my experience, are actually more prone to fight with each other. The dominants of most of my "more aggressive" metriaclima and pseudotropheus species are so dominant that they don't actually have rivals, so their aggression is pretty much one-sided (short duration pursuits rather than all out brawls). However my labs (l. caeruleus & l. mbamba) viewed each other as equals and would fight frequently, until I introduced more females, even little guys like these juvies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGJpHdCmSDM.
In instances where the weaker of the two is viewed as an extreme threat, aggression can be fairly one-way and yellow labs are capable of killing each other.
The solution is to increase the quantity of females among the yellow labs (1 male per several females). So if you have 2 or 3 males you'd want to have at least twice that quantity of females. Keeping just two (if that is the quantity you have) will mean that the odds of having two males is high, or even with 1m/1f, the male is intolerant of the non-receptive female. So in any case, more female yellow labs are required.
