At last!i have bricharids

[catfishmike]

on friday i finaly went to sell off those extra gupps that had been taking up space,and that severum that just never fit in any of my tanks.
'm poking around the store while the clerkwas totaling everything up and what do i find?a whole tank of what looks to be the biggest brichardis i have seen in a long time.needless to say i cashed out my credit and took home a pair.or so i hope.
it's been about a day now and i'm thinking it's two males.
the dominant one keeps the smaller one to the top of the tank for most of the day,although he ignores the other one during food time,and allows the other one to sleep at night,i'm worried about the daytime behaviour.
i know this isn't uncommon for african cichlids,but should it go away in a few days,or should i be getting more fish to distract the dominant one?
i'd perfer not to have too many in case i get a pair to breed.

 

[TaffyFish]

Brichardi are notoriously intolerant of conspecifics mike, 2 females might, might have worked together but 2 males would need a very large tank in order to co-exist.
Like you say, if you get more, you risk adding a female which will mean a pair forming, heightened aggression then more fry than you'll be able to cope with
I've never heard of anyone trying a bachelor community of brichardi

 

[catfishmike]

sorry i forgot to mention the tank
it's a 30 gallon 30"lx12"wx15"t with lots of lace rock.
filtration is performed by2 aquaclear 150's and a penguin170.occupants are 5 upside down cats.i know that poses some problems when it comes time for egglaying but,i can deal with that when time comes,thats not a problem,'cept for the first batch of eggs,heehee.
for all that i've studied up on this fish,when i seen them it's like all that knowledge just dribbled out of my head!i was trying to sex them and i just drew a blank(not that sexing them is easy, the clerk and i had quite a time even after consulting a few books)so i said "tough,i take a shot and hope all goes well.if not it's back to the store"
pair forming is my goal, so long as i don't have to take some six odd fish back to the store after two pair off.
i feel like such a dumas all of the sudden,it's another case of dream fish overrides good sense.

 

[Orion]

Wicked Mike! Glad to hear it!

Of course you know the best way to get a pair is to secure around 6 juvies and let them do it naturaly. I think that just getting two adults is going to be a shoot in the dark, but hey, stranger things have happened.

I had some very good luck when I added some danios as target fish with my pair. They were doing about the same as yours, the male would not leave the female alone and would keep her confined to the top most of the time. However, this does not meen that you have a male and female, because I witness this behaviour frequently in my grow out tank with 9 juvenile brichardi.

For sexing them, I tried to vent them, and ended up mixing the two. lol. However I can share what I have, and the differences between my pair.
-The male is longer, and also appears to be more compressed than the female, while the female has more of a cylindrical shape.
-The males anal,dorsal, and caudle fins have much longer filiments when compared to the female.
-The yellow spot is much more pronounced on the gill plate on the male.

Like I say, this is what some differences are between my pair, I cant say this goes for all the brichardi. There are several more differences, however these are mainly restricted to the way they act when guarding the fry.

Mine finaly had there second brood of fry about three weeks ago. Shortly there after they started to fight agian in the same manner you described. I seperated the male, but with some calm talking to some others (Taff) I let him back out to just let nature take its course. They fought very fiercely for a while, but evenutaly seemed to work everything out, and I do belive that the female is busy once again tending to more eggs. They still go about the rough behaviour once a day or so, but its not long, and no real blows are delt, so I let them at it.

 

[FroggyFox]

congrats Mike they're gorgeous aren't they?

 

[Lotus]

Congrats! While we were in the LFS the other day, someone brought in a huge bag of brichardi fry... very nice. I hope they turn out to be a pair for you

 

[catfishmike]

well taffy the dominant male has deciced he's become intolerant of all the tankmembers.good call on that one.
now all the usd cats have been displaced into the corner as well.and while it doesn't bother me to much,i know in the long run it's going to be stressfull for all involved.
currently all of the rocks are stacked across the tank in a reeflike structure,sitting very close to the back of the tank,but still offering room to travel across the back unhindered.the male focuses on the left side of the tank without fail,but ingonres the right completly.

orion,thanks for the tips,but the more i think about it,i think there just wasn't any females in the tank,thus explaining our inablity to find one.so far your tips are the most comprehensive i have read,so thanks,it' nice to find some less vauge info.
froggy and lotus,thanks despite the little problem i'm having right now,i'm still very excited about getting these fish.ever since the first time i seen them i have been enamoured by their grace and subtle beauty,now if they would just cooperate with me.....

 

[catfishmike]

well it's been two more days and now it looks like i've hit a bit of a balance.now both come out into the open without sparing,but the synos are still kept at bay.
also another thought,after doing some reading of a profile of them,it was said that they are open water plankton feeders.
while they feed fine on flake,i was wondering if anyone has every used a bottle of shelf stable plankton to feed their brichardis,or if it's even worth trying?

 

[TaffyFish]

i'd perfer not to have too many in case i get a pair to breed.

Sorry mike I completely misread your first post to mean that you were not looking to get a pair, the contradiction in the second post made me think you were all over the place in your objectives here.

The chances of you getting a pair by buying two fish that are notoriously difficult to sex are slim. Like Orion says, the normal route is to buy 6 juvies and let them decide who'll pair off. Brichardi are so aggressive you cannot leave this to chance, we're not just talking stress, you'll have shredded fins and dead bodies.

It sounds like the store has adult fish from your description, if it were me I would pick 2 large and 2 small and ask the store to take any extras back. As you already have 2 probable males get another 2 smaller fish and see if you get lucky and they pair off. It will be more difficult now as the largest has already established the tank as his, so best to take out all the fish, rearrange the rockwork, then add them all back in again. Keep a net handy to remove the extras once they have paired.

You'll have to reconsider the usd catfish unless they can find a home quickly in the new regime. I would not create a single rockwork structure the length of the tank, instead create two separate rockpiles, one at either end. This will prevent the brichardi taking over the whole tank and give the catfish somewhere to call home. There's no guarantee that it will stay like this once the first few spawns grow up, you'll probably end up with a species tank but it's worth a shot. The brichardi know that catfish eat eggs and fry, so they'll be very defensive. This means the catfish will not have a fun time in this tank even if they are able to take the aggravation.

I wouldn't be too fussy about diet, a mix is always good for cichlids. Brichardi like a high protein diet but you can base this on dried foods like Tetra Prima and Hikari cichlid gold with occasional frozen cichlid diet, mysis shrimp and brine shrimp.

 

[catfishmike]

yea i know after reading that myself i thought it sounded funny,but it had been up too long to bother editing.

i want a pair,but my underlying problem is i have a limited schedule in terms of when i work and when i get to visit the lfs.
thus the not wanting so many fish for pairing.
it took me two months to get the luck to visit the lfs from this last time.and i don't want to have a tub of fish on my floor for months waiting to go back to the lfs.

i'm shifting the usd cats to my 6 foot tank in a day or so,a few have nicked tails and such and the dominant one has stepped up on his territory needs,so out they go.
i was hoping it might work,but it don't look that way.i've had my usd cats for a while and i don't see the need to give them any more trouble.plus they will like a wood and plant tank better anyways.
my hopes was that the bricharids wouldn't address the egg issue untill they came into spawing.
i don't think the tank footprint is enough for cohabitation.each day as the bricharids get more comfortable they take on more territory.

i'm almost starting to belive that they may be a male and female as the dominant fish no longer forces the submissive into the corners,and does not persue the fish when making visual contact

thanks for the advice on the rock structuring,that probably some of the most practical advice i have read about these fish so far.
i did a goggle search yesterday and the first three pages were nothing species profiles and they all said the same thing.
not much in the way of details over the basic profile.
thanks taffy

 

[TaffyFish]

There are good reasons why you allow cichlids to pair off naturally from a reasonable size group of juvies, rather than trust to luck and throw a male and female at each other. (Such a group used to be 12 or more, but more practical considerations force us to say 6. Breeders have no qualms about culling the rest, we fishkeepers struggle to get the lfs to take the extras back.)

You want the dominant male to come to the top of the pile competitively, ie one who has been tested against his peers and shown himself to be a true alpha male. He'll be more likely to be a good mate and protective parent.

You then want this dominant male to pick the right female(s), or more likely, for the right female(s) to select the territory of the dominant male. Together this gives you decent breeding stock.

Taking the natural competition out of the mating game means you can end up with substandard parents, behaviours, spawns and young. The pair bond with some brichardi will break down somewhat between spawns and they may have bouts of fighting, even to lip locking and fin damage. you might have to separate them within the tank or even remove them temporarily to recover condition. I'm not saying this is a consequence of substandard stock, much more likely that it's down to living within the confines of aquaria. You need to prepare for it though and provide lots of hiding places in case you get the marital problems or even a divorce. Sometimes, as with Orion's pair, and the pair I had, you just need them to sort through their aggression and hope one of them backs down before getting seriously hurt. then you feel great when they get back together and spawn again.

Brichardi keeping is a roller coaster ride but so rewarding!

 

[Orion]

Originally posted by TaffyFish
Brichardi keeping is a roller coaster ride but so rewarding!

I couldn't agree more!