Frontosa

[jabear32]

Have tree in a 95 with other peacocks. The 2 larger 3-4 inch frontosas  are fighting. I would not be worried if
they were not locking up mouth to mouth. they have been together for about 2 weeks and this is the first time
I have seen them do this. Anyone want to help with ways to stop this or do I have to get rid of one of them.

[J-WS6]

Re: Frontosa

That's probably because your ratio is 2M/1F...or atleast sounds like it. I would do a water change and re-arrange all of the hardscape in the tank, that way it gives all the inhabitants in the tank to re-establish territory. Or, you can try to add more females to the group to lower the aggression. If the fighting continues and they begin to do damage to themselves or other fish, you may want to consider housing one of them in another tank or selling one of them.

[jabear32]

Re: Frontosa

So how do you sex them at a young age. I would be willing to get another female and sacrifice one male

[J-WS6]

Re: Frontosa

Hard to say, especially without seeing a picture. Obviously the two males would be the ones chasing/fighting each other. Also, look to see which one is possessing the most color, that would most likely be the alpha. Size is a factor here as well...

What type of Frontosa are these?

[jabear32]

Re: Frontosa

One is a burundi and the other two on the tank said ice blue and I think it was amumba but I am
not real sure of those two the other one I know for fact. They are the same size and like I said
have not shown any signs of this till now. I will try to get some pics of the two and let you see but is
there a way besides aggressiveness towards each other to tell the male and female species.
I know some fish are harder than others but most of the other africans are easy id.
thanks for the help

[J-WS6]

Re: Frontosa

Try a water change first and re-arrange the hardscape, then come back with results. 3-4" is still considered the juvenile stage, so maybe with seeing a picture I'm sure someone could give you a pretty good hypothesis. As far as the varient, I've have never heard of an 'Amumba' Frontosa. The only time I've heard the term 'Ice Blue' used was for an electric blue peacock (malawi cichlid). How often are you doing water changes on this tank? How often are you feeding? Where did you get these from?

[jabear32]

Re: Frontosa

Here are the fish first is the small the second is the one is the one fighting with the burundi and the
last one is the burundi.

[jabear32]

Re: Frontosa

I feed twice a day I got the burundi from Aquarium Design Group and got the others from fish are us.
the tank is about 4 weeks old and I do about a 20% water change every 4 to 5 weeks.

[J-WS6]

Re: Frontosa

At adult size you could look for the male 'parts' to determine the sex, but that's not the case here. Aside from size or color, you can look at the pelvic fins and usually males will have slightly longer ones...like in picture #2. Also notice the amount of color he is displaying. It's still hard to tell in pic #3 if it's a male because of the loss of color, because of the stress...

also,

..a water change every 4 to 5 weeks?!?! that's crazy! you should try to cut that down to at least once a week if anything. The more fish you add the more your nitrates/nitrites and ammonia will go up. I'm not saying you can't get away with it, but it only takes once for something to go wrong..plus, don't you want what's best for your fishies?

Before you do anything else, like I mentioned before, try a water change and re-arrange the scape. That costs you nothing and could fix the problem until you figure out another solution.

Cheers,
J-WS6

[Fishcrazy1]

Re: Frontosa

The only sure way to tell sex on cyphos is to vent them.  You can only give an educated guess from looking at pics.  At the size you have now, you would be very lucky to be able to acurately tell what sex fish you have.

On the topic of varient ID...pic 1 = burundi, pic 2 = kigoma (7 stripe), pic 2 = burundi.

[NDsuperduty]

Re: Frontosa

I am actually suprised you are seeing aggression at that size.  But I would recommend the same asj-ws6.

Do a 50-60% water change, and re-arrange your rock.  This should take care of the aggression for a while.  Then try to do a 20-30% change every week, or atleast every 2 weeks.

I would also recommend swapping the one 7-stripe for a another burundi, or the two burundi for two more 7-stripe.

[imagirlgeek]

Re: Frontosa

I agree.  If you can rearrange the territories, and make sure there are lots of little 'caves' for them, that should help reduce the fighting.  I have multiple males together in 3 different tanks and do not see the aggression you are seeing.  But the trick to that is to make sure there are more caves than fish so the won't be fighting over who has what area of the tank.  That's just my experience.  Hope you can get it worked out!   Good Luck and let us know how it goes.

[supadave]

Re: Frontosa

On the topic of varient ID...pic 1 = burundi, pic 2 = kigoma (7 stripe), pic 2 = burundi.

I'm guessing the same thing.

[eklikewhoa]

Re: Frontosa

How big is the tank dimension wise?

I raised my Mobas from fry and watched as they all quarreled to the point where a lot of them lost fins all over. It happens and if you just got them 2wks ago I would let them settle it amongst themselves.

As far as sexing.....a guess is all you will get from pictures. I vented mine and some that I thought were male were not.

I would first....post tank dimensions, second up you water changes to at least once every two weeks if not every week and if anything I would keep one single variant vs miltiple but that's all up to you.


You could try re-arranging and water change but they will probably go at it again until dominance is settled.

[jabear32]

Re: Frontosa

How big is the tank dimension wise?

I raised my Mobas from fry and watched as they all quarreled to the point where a lot of them lost fins all over. It happens and if you just got them 2wks ago I would let them settle it amongst themselves.

As far as sexing.....a guess is all you will get from pictures. I vented mine and some that I thought were male were not.

I would first....post tank dimensions, second up you water changes to at least once every two weeks if not every week and if anything I would keep one single variant vs miltiple but that's all up to you.


You could try re-arranging and water change but they will probably go at it again until dominance is settled.

It is a 95 wave front 48x25x24. As far as water changes I will start doing once every 2 weeks.  Funny how the two fish
that were to be the same and out of the same tank at a fish store were diffrent.  The first two like I said came from fish r us and came out of the same tank. Guess I saved some money though. My filtration is a wet dry that is rated for a 200 gallon tank with a pump that at 3 feet goes between 550 and 600 gallons per hour.