Having a bit of trouble...

[AquaBarb]

Hows things dude? Any improvement?

 

[Wills]

Hows things dude? Any improvement?

Oddly yes - the sub dominant male msobo died Friday night - obvious fighting. But after that the skittishness has calmed down for the rest of the day.

I’ve also switched food back I started on a small nt labs pelllet then went to a jbl stick around the time this started but started the nt labs pellet on Thursday so wonder if that’s something?

 

[Colin_T]

Bad food can cause bloating but male Mbuna fight and if there are 2 or 3 males, the smallest weakest ones die first. Tropheus are the same and you can start off with 10 young fish and end up with 1 male and a group of females.

 

[Wills]

Bad food can cause bloating but male Mbuna fight and if there are 2 or 3 males, the smallest weakest ones die first. Tropheus are the same and you can start off with 10 young fish and end up with 1 male and a group of females.

Yeah thats a couple of good points.

The change in food should have been a stronger thought! I had mainly used the NT Labs food which is the fine powder, but as this started to run out I started adding the JBL sticks until eventually I was just using the sticks and for some of the smaller fish this was a challenge to eat so I was trying to break them up but given their primitive digestive system I can see how big food will be an issue... from what I know they just have more or less a straight tube from mouth to well... you know... this does make sense for the three smaller fish I lost, though not one of the larger ones.

The aggression thing is definitely an issue with the number of males but its just been impossible to know in shops what I'm getting. I think the most recent death was just this unfortunate situation of male led hierarchies in these fish. I believe I now have 2 of these Msobo males left and each is in dominant male dress but they have two distinct territories in the tank but this is the first time its just been these two.

Wills