[Alistriwen]

I have a question that hopefully someone will have some tips for. I've got a pair of J. Transcriptus living in a 33 gal. Neither is full grown but a month or two ago they started to lay eggs and raise fry in the hollow of a piece of driftwood in the tank. At that point I cleared the tank of other fish and let them do their thing. Everything was fine until water change time last night. We did everything as usual, didn't move any of the scenery around in the tank but when I came back to look at them later on in the evening the larger of the two (likely the female I guess) was driving the smaller one away from the nest, despite its best efforts to get back there. Today the smaller fish is on the complete opposite side of the tank with no signs of any reconcilliation . The fry of all different sizes are still doing fine in the hollow but Id like to get the lovebirds back together if I could. Does anyone have any suggestions for doing this? None of my cichlids have ever had serious disputes before lol .

 

[Charlutz]

Give the smaller fish plenty of places to hide. Add some other fish back into the tank to act as dithers. Good luck. I have a trio of transcriptus. The larger is the male. The two smaller are females. One is definitely "number 2 wife." She gets evicted every once in a while. Sometimes I don't see her for 4-5 days. But then she gets back in the good graces.

 

[Alistriwen]

Well it is good to hear that there is hope they'll get back together . Im moving in two weeks and if they havent made up by then I think Im just going to toss them in with all the other julies for the move and let them all pair off again in the new setting. *** got a trio going in my other julie tank but I doubt I'll be able to catch them as a seperate trio since all the fish bunch up when the net goes in and theyre hard to tell apart. Anyone have any thoughts on throwing them all back together? Right now *** got the first two I mentioned alone in a 33 and then the trio is with 5 others in a 35.

 

[Charlutz]

They should start the process again. I had 7 in a 40br. The largest fish paired off. I then did some reorganizing of the tank and the pair bond broke. The largest fish then established the trio I currently have. I got the other four fish out and the weakest fish of that group became the most dominant and killed the other three. Got to love julies. Pair bonding by homicide.

 

[Alistriwen]

On the bright side, they only kill each other and not other fish like some of my other cichlids . Looks like the smaller guy is inching back slowly and getting chased less and less, we'll see how it goes lol. It's going to be quite a process moving them all and all the fry 2 hours away.. not to mention the hundred or so other fish that will be moving with me .