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Harlequins Trying to Get Down


Buckman
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Hey everyone. I have had a 20 gallon aquarium for about 6 to 7 months now. Finally settled in well. I started with 10 Harelquins and 9 are left. I recently bought a new heater to make sure the temp didn't drop in winter. Maybe it is the added heat, the tank settling in, or both. But they looked extremely frustrated trying to dance.

They pair off and then fight a bit. I have even seen males separated from the group for a long time in a thicket of plants. It doesn't last more than a few hours, and I have never located the eggs. There is a fairly new female betta added to the mix that seems to like to disturb all this behavior. So that doesn't help. I would like to breed them, but not right now. I don't thing I'll be able to separate anyone or have an extra tank for this until Spring. So I have a few questions.

1. Would getting a 10th calm them down, or make it worse?

2. My new fluval heater is the one set at 80 degrees. Do I need to pull that out and reduce the temp a couple degrees?

And finally, when I do get another tank to maybe make some more...

1. These guys are in water that I have made hard with crushed coral. Was looking to stabilize pH with high light and CO2 going on in here. It helped a lot. But from my reading, if my harlequins want to breed in water this hard, they must be from farms in Florida and not from South America. So, when it is time to breed them, can I dispense with then soft water parameters? Or is this a hard stop and part of the reason why they seem frustrated now?

Thanks in advance.

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80 is towards the high end they likebut not the highest so I would not worry about discomfort. The higher the temps the higher their metabolism is and the more rambunctious they will be. It does not sound stressful or real fighting. As long as you find no injuries or tail damage I woul not worry. Adding a new fish also will cause fish to sometimes reestablish territories and dominance rank. Give it a week or two. If no injuries excessive hiding or glass surfacing I personally would not worry. Adding 2 more may help. I personally never add just one to a schooling group. It scares the one individual and they become a target for aggression from the established group has been my experience but others may have had different experiences. If you are thinking a 10th because of reading they do better in x number I would not use that as gospel. I’m a rebel and keep things in the numbers I want which seldom matches the internet and I have had very little issue. Fish can’t count 😉🤣(just needed to add humor 😁).  I don’t use Co2 and never bred these guys but I wish you luck on your adventure. 

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That's all good advice. To be honest, now that the tank is established I was wanting to add a few, but stopped when I saw all this different behavior. But I am in no rush to do anything to be honest. The tank is gorgeous, no one is hurt, and signs of mating usually mean super stability. (In most cases. Sometimes certain creatures and plants like to shoot out offspring if they are stressed.) I just made a couple changes and need to let it play out. If I get yard evidence of some thing I'll update.

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On 1/8/2022 at 10:01 AM, Buckman said:

That's all good advice. To be honest, now that the tank is established I was wanting to add a few, but stopped when I saw all this different behavior. But I am in no rush to do anything to be honest. The tank is gorgeous, no one is hurt, and signs of mating usually mean super stability. (In most cases. Sometimes certain creatures and plants like to shoot out offspring if they are stressed.) I just made a couple changes and need to let it play out. If I get yard evidence of some thing I'll update.

It sounds like you have a good relationship with your fish, and are very attentive. Plan on your betta stealing any eggs that are laid, as long as the betta is in the tank. 

Do you have an external control of your heater (inkbird, pymeter, or the like)? After cooking a tank with a malfunctioning heater, I never use without a pymeter, and I can program the pymeter instead of the heater. Plus, I can set an audible alarm if anything goes wrong. 

80° is going to have everyone feeling frisky, a decrease of 1° to 2° F may calm some of the more boisterous behaviors.

If you want a larger school, I discovered that if I introduce at least 3 new fish and a couple new plants (quarantine together), by planting to shift territories while the fish are acclimating from Q/T and then releasing as soon as I am done with tank maintenance, I am far less likely to lose a fish to dominance displays. 

Everyone is too busy checking out the new plants to chase the new fish. (If you don't want new plants, you can just rearrange a few plants or trim, or do something with hardscape to distract the older fish from paying too much attention to the new fish).

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More good advice. Thanks. It's a peaceful tank. Harlequins, trap door snails, ghost shrimp. The betta is the wildest choice but she was chosen for personality.

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So this is a 'modular' aquarium where I experiment with conditions, placement, lighting, etc. So new plants go in here at least once a week. Or if that doesn't happen, something usually gets consolidated or re-potted. So there is a change. The tanks stays stable because right under those concrete plates is several pounds of lava rock with a solid culture of bacteria. The pots usually contain a mess of sand, gravel, Fluval Stratum, and sometimes even some crushed coral. I have a box of old materials taken out of other tanks. I put that in as the substrate and then top off with sand in big pots, and usually gravel in the smaller ones.

It's got an AquaClear 50 HOB filled full of donor lava rock as well as crushed coral. I make one gallon sugar bombs and pump that in through a little in-tank pump turned turned into a diffuser/reactor. And I have a nano sponge filter from the Coop in there too.

Now that the particulars of the tank are known, let's talk about quarantine. I don't usually do it with plants. Just the fish. Lately I have been buying plants in-vitro and starting them in the bottom of this tank. I used to buy live plants locally. I just don't anymore due to a host of problems mostly having to do with bladder snails and algae. The plants in here look way better than anything I can find locally. I have something like 15+ plants going on in good quantity, so I don't usually add anything to the collection unless it's in-vitro or from the Coop. It just invites pain.

I have an InkBird in the basement. I have multiple small heaters in all tanks. I like to be redundant if possible. This one has two Fluval 50 watts in it and stays at 80. I am using the InkBird for a mushroom project in the basement, but I was wondering if backing down to 78 or so would make them a little less randy. Ever since I put those wide leafed betta bulbs in the tank, the harlequins are always dancing in frustrated ways.

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