Apisto Borellii aggression

[Jdogtrainer]

Hi everyone!

I have a question with a story lol 😆

I have a "pair" of youngish Apistos I got from my LFS. Did my normal quarantine time of 3 weeks in my 10 gallon before introducing them to my community.

The female was/is very shy and sensitive to anything she sees as scary, while the male is super confident and social and is never, ever, a bully - with the one exception of his "mate" the female apisto.

I took her out of my community tank after about a week as she wouldn't eat anything but frozen brine and was starving and super stressed.

I had her in my quarantine tank for the past 3 weeks and her condition improved. But I reintroduced her to the community tank hoping her counterpart would have improved attitude but sadly he's even worse.

Is there anything I can,do to fix this or do I need to return her? I was hoping to breed them in the future 😞

Edited October 12, 2020 by Jdogtrainer

[Aerion]

is there enough places that she could hide from him? 

[Paul]

It’s always best to have more females than males. This way the male can’t direct all of his aggression at one female. I have 5 A.nijsseni (2 males & 3 females) in a 20L each female has her own cave and a large piece of drift wood along with the plants provide plenty of visual breaks. The result is a fairly peaceful tank. There are also Cory’s, Otto’s, and Tetras in the tank.

[Jdogtrainer]

50 minutes ago, Aerion said:

is there enough places that she could hide from him? 

I have large rocks, pots and, plants. She disappears a lot to where I can't even,begin to find her. So I think it's ok there. :)

[gcalberto]

The only time I had that happen to me was when I was sold a cacatuoides pair, but the female was actually an agassizii. 

I'm no expert in borellis, but this could explain the aggression 

[Paul]

14 minutes ago, Jdogtrainer said:

I have large rocks, pots and, plants. She disappears a lot to where I can't even,begin to find her. So I think it's ok there. 🙂

She’s still hiding. If you have the extra cash and can find them I think you should get one or two more females. You’ll be surprised how fast the aggression goes down. I originally got a trio of nijsseni on AquaBid but one of the females died in transit. While I was waiting for her replacement the male’s aggression was off the charts. When I added the replacement fish (I bought another trio) the aggression  basically disappeared. Just my experience.

Edited October 13, 2020 by Paul

[Jdogtrainer]

1 hour ago, Paul said:

She’s still hiding. If you have the extra cash and can find them I think you should get one or two more females. You’ll be surprised how fast the aggression goes down. I originally got a trio of nijsseni on AquaBid but one of the females died in transit. While I was waiting for her replacement the male’s aggression was off the charts. When I added the replacement fish (I bought another trio) the aggression  basically disappeared. Just my experience.

This sounds very reasonable! I'll try and get another female and see how it goes. Thanks so much!