Lyretail Anthias

[kkiel02]

For those who have Lyretails, do you have problems with the larger anthias picking/killing off the smaller specimens in the harem? I am thinking about getting 7 of these but read that these, and other larger anthias have a tendancy to do this.

[Mike]

Kevin, yes we have... we started with 5 and are down to 3, the male and 2 females. The larger females tend to pick on the smaller ones. Bullys.

[Europhyllia]

The problem is fish don't read books and rarely care about what we want.

I thought a large harem would be nice and got 6 Bartlett's. Turns out 1 of them was always bullied -because it was a Dispar and much smaller than the Bartlett's. So I got some Dispars to keep the lone Dispar company leaving only 5 Bartlett's (plus a new family of Dispars).
Then a second male developed almost a year later in the Bartlett's family and they split off.
So rather than the large harem of Bartlett's I now have
1 Bartlett's Duo
1 Batlett's Trio
1 Dispar Trio

They're not Lyretails but even these smaller ones do pick on the littlest one it seems. Luckily so far the Bartlett's even with two males now have not been killing each other off though...

[kkiel02]

So would yall say that once the number is down to say 3-4 that they dont seem to pick on the smaller ones anymore? Maybe I will just do two different species if thats the case.

[BSJF]

The disclaimer is that you have a big honkin' tank. I have 5 disbars and they school with the blue/green chromis. There is a low guy on the totem pole, but if she went away, the next in line would take her place.

[Europhyllia]

Neither my Bartlett's nor Dispars have killed anybody off and like L says there always is one low man (female actually I guess).

Who knows what they want to do. Just be flexible.

[Kristy]

I think all or most of the rules go out the window when we are talking about a tank as big as yours. Get as many as you want to have, but get them all together and preferably get them small so that they are young and can grow bigger together and work out their dominance without too much drama. The really aggressive behaviors seem to come from the existing females when any new females were introduced down the line. There would be an ugly competition for pecking order.

If you want to keep more than one species, then you can certainly do so and you could choose to introduce them one species at a time. Or if you want to just have a bunch of lyretails then get them all together.