aggression

[Tom Mroz <tmroz@art-inc.com>]

Erik D. Olson wrote:
>We have a trio of nijsseni.  Right now, each is in its own tank because of
>their agressive nature.  First, we kept them all in a 20long with lots of
>bogwood and pots to hide in.
>
>Charles Ray wrote:

>I can echo Erik's experience.  The male beat up on the female, they
>spawned, female ate eggs, and proceeded to kill male.  A friend in 
>Atlanta had pandurini, during lip locking, male tore off lips of female 
who >starved to death.  These are amazingly aggressive apistos.

We have seen quite a few messages in the past several days regarding this 
subject, and observances on nijsseni, in particular, range from peaceful to 
"pirhana".  It would be interesting to try to correlate behavior with 
environmental influences, or other factors, such as source of fish (wild 
vs. domestic bred).  Personnaly, I have never seen aggression in nijsseni, 
to the extent of torn fins, anyways.  I have always kept them in a 10-12 
gallon tank, by themselves (cichlid-wise), and with some sort of small 
tetra dither fish (4-8 neons or glowlights for instance).  I have kept them 
under various water conditions ranging from very soft and acid to tap water 
(160 ppm, ~7.8 pH) in my attempts to keep them alive more than a few weeks 
(my problems are from overall mortality).  They look and act good for a few 
weeks, and even often spawn.  They push each other around, but never to the 
extent that I feel they need to be separated.

Seems a number of people reporting problems have their nijsseni in larger 
tanks.  Is that a factor?

Tom



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