Big, agressive Brevis male

[buddha]

The biggest male I have in my 75 has decided he owns the tank and wants to court 3 of the 4 females and won't leave the other males along. He'll literally go from the one end to the other to chase the other males. There is a large rock pile in the middle, with various other small objects along the way.

Is this normal and is there anything I can do about it? Or shouild I just let the boys work it out? I'm just concerened he's going to stress the others out.

[liamthecoder]

hmm well i had this same problem a while ago with my jacofriebergi and my red empress's the friebergi demolished every one of my red empress's in 10 minutes randomly..

the empress's were 2x the size of the friebergi so i was rather confused, i started to wonder if it was trying to take control of the tank.

in the end i had to get rid of my friebergi as he was far too rought and aggressive for my tank..

[Cate]

Big, aggressive male what??

[buddha]

Guess I should have clarified that.......Brevis.

I have a 4 males, 4 females. Less than ideal, but it's what I have. The large male seems to have what I call his primary girl on one corner end of the tank, but he constantly cruises to the opposing corner where 2 females have set up residence in shells. And of course he has decided as of late to chase the other males around the tank to no end. I'm not sure if this is something temporary, but he never used to do this. 

[CAJAGISAN]

happes to me with my occies :/

2males have splat the tank in halves..leaving other 5 smallr dudes n girls in tank corners..

i will ahve to remove at least one of the males tomorrow.. in a 2 gal non heated tank...we will ahve to manage cause i got nowhere to put him..

i asked local shops already :/ and have put adverts on internet that im willing to give him free...into good hands ofc..

[(Anthony)]

I have the same problem,
I had to remove my boy to a fry saver cause he was chasing away the other fish
i think him and his misses will be better of in a tank of there own,

Anthony,

[Alleycat]

Guess I should have clarified that.......Brevis.
I have a 4 males, 4 females. Less than ideal, but it's what I have.

It's time to trade a couple of pairs off. Change the tank around, add a few more caves, shells, and rocks for site breaks, and you may get away with 2 prs in a 75g. I kept 2 prs in a 30g for about a year until the alpha male wanted both girls to himself. I had several batches of fry from both pairs until one day, he'd had enough...(or in this case he didn't get enough I guess ) and decided his male tankmate had to go.

Just my 2 cents

[buddha]

They've all been pretty good the last couple of months, and I've tweaked the shells arangement a few times. I just think the big guy has acclimated to his surroundings and is pushing his weight around.

[Cate]

I agree, it's probably best to scale down to 2 pairs at most.  Brevis males are nasty...but then again most shellie males are nasty when breeding.  I had 2 pairs in a 55 Gallon and that was barely enough...they used to try to rip off each others lower jaw all the time!

[buddha]

Thanks for the input everyone. I guess I'm just going to have to thin the herd. I suppose I keep two of the males and 3 of the females. Now I just have to figure out who to pull.

[Cate]

I don't know about anybody else, but IME, the Brevis stuck with their one female, they actually ostrasized the extra females.  But it could just be the individual personalities of the fish.

[buddha]

Well, I think there are other things that are going in the tank that might have led to his sudden behavior change. The next largest male that had paired up, has not been quite right the last 4-5 days.......just sitting on the bottom next to his female/shell. This pair was between the others and I think since he's been down and out, the larger male has just been feeling his oats with no one to keep him in check.

I pulled the male in question out and I'm treating him for possible bloat, though the guy doesn't show signs of a darn thing. He's probably the best colored/looking one in the tank, so I hope whatever he has, he gets over it so I can put him back with his female. Maybe once he's feeling better, things will settle down in the tank.......we'll see. Since I pulled him, the bully has been keeping to his side of the tank.

It is entirely possible that the big guy was just harassing the two other females, rather then trying to make friends. He definitely has one female he sticks too.