What is wrong with my girls?

[FishEnthusiast]

Hi all.

It seems like all of a sudden, after a month of peace my girls are being aggressive towards eachother. Is this normal? I am seeing nipped fins and I have never seen that before. I have not moved anything around in the tank. I did have a gourami in there for a short period of time yesterday, but TBH, I saw some nipped fins before I did that. Is there anything I can do to help the nipped fins get better? I could try to add more hiding places. I have 2 caves, lots of plants and a bigger cave like structure that has some silk plants on it.

There are 7 girls in a 20G tank. I just did a water change yesterday and the readings are all good. There is salt in the water already. Should I add some bettafix or diluted melafix?

Thanks for your suggestions

 

[WILDER]

Some more hiding spaces, and good water quality will soon heal there fins, good luck.

 

[FishEnthusiast]

This is what their tank looks like right now

As you can see it has a lot of hiding places. The girls go inside the large cave system on the right. There are large holes at the bottom that they can easily fit into. The large plants on the left are home to at least 2 of the girls on a regular basis. The terra cotta pots usually are ignored, but I sometimes see one or two girls in there.

Is there room in there for me to add more hiding places? If so, what is recommended. Preferably something I may have in the house already, I am on a tight budget until Wednesday. Thx all

 

[WILDER]

Nice tank, could add another hiding space, have you seen them nipping at one another.

 

[FishEnthusiast]

I have not seen nipping, but I have seen aggression. For the most part they aviod eachother. The nipping happened while I was sleeping. There are a couple of girls in there that are a lot bigger than the others. These girls are fine, no nips at all, so I am assuming they are the aggressors.

 

[BettaMomma]

I have a 10G with 6 girls in it.
Well, 5 of them at the moment, one of them is in a hospital tank.

Anyway, through lots of rough fin-nipping times, I think I've figured out what makes female girlies tick.

There are a number of things that make them nip. First, based on what I've seen, is not enough plants. I have about 8 plants (pretty good sized ones now) scattered throughout the tank and i plan to at least double that. The amount of fin nipping goes down exponentially when I have plants in there, REGARDLESS of the number of hidey spots. Having said that, though - I recently overhauled their tank and now they (for the 6 girls) have the following for hidey spots:
a bridge
a large cave formation
a hollow 1/2 log
2 rock caves (not enclosed, but they can swim in, under and thru it and it appears as if they think that no one can see them when they go under it, even tho NONE of them is covered up)
and a large piece of fake driftwood that they can swim thru and sort of hide in

I took a lot of their old plants out at that time because they were either eaten up so badly by Gary that they had to go, or they were dying cuz they weren't the right kind of that type of aquarium. SO... they were left with only about 2 - 3 plants. The fighting started almost instantaneously. I didn't see it first hand, cuz when I went over to look in on them they wanted food and didn't care about each other. It was when the lights went out that all hell broke loose. Next morning I found half fins, etc.

The other thing that gets them going is if it's egg time for one of them, it can set off the whole crew. It's kinda the equivalent to *that time* in humans, so they get rather obnoxiously haggy. They all turn into nippers for a while during that time, and within a few days it goes away.

SOOOO.... having said ALL that rambling... I would add a few more plants, a couple more hidey spots and see what happens. I'll try to get a picture of my girly tank tonight and post it tomorrow so you can see what i have. The setup we have here right now seems to be working out really well. Everyone seems to have determined what is "their spot to be" and it's understood that anyone who invades that space will be chased away.

EDIT: I wouldn't bother with anything except good clean water, and the salt is an added bonus. I make sure that the water in the tank here is really clean and test it quite frequently, and given that it is, their fins usually grow back literally within one day, sometimes 2 at the most. That is assuming that you have corrected the problem with the nipping to begin with. I really think that if you add a few plants and a few places for them to run off to if they're feeing chased they'll improve very fast.

EXTRA NOTE: I have been adding colloidal silver to their tank whenever I see fin damage and it's UNbelievable how fast their fins heal. Within hours you can see clean growth - sometimes before the sun comes up the next day they're back to where they were before they were nipped. It is some truly amazing stuff.

 

[FishEnthusiast]

Well, I think I can snag a plant out of hubby's 10G. I have some cabomba in my 55G, but I just trimmed it, so I will have to wait a week or two till there is new growth to take some clippings. Right now I have 6 or 7 plants in there, 2 are really tall and the rest are medium height. I know what you mean about the girls hiding and thinking they are invisible. I see them doing that in the big structure I have. I am like you and don't like adding things to the water. I have 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, ph 7.0 and the nitrate is <5. I do a 20% water change once a week. I believe that one or two are carrying eggs right now. Their bellies are a bit bigger than normal. That could have caused the nippiness I guess. I wish I could get more females right now, but I just can't. I am hoping that by doing that I will be able to spread the aggression out a little more. I don't know that it will help, but I am hoping so. Plus I really like the way the females look, so I would like to add more.