Adding more lyretail anthias to a tank

[mfinn]

I bought 5 female lyretail anthias from liveaquaria a few weeks ago and have lost 3.
The two remaining anthias are going to stay in the qt tank for another week with prazipro, then they are going into my 233 reef tank.
Liveaquaria said they will replace the 3 that died.
I'm wondering if I can add more females to the 233 after they go through qt.
Of the 2 remaining fish one is bigger and really a dominate aggressive one.

 

[Triggerfish]

as long as they stayed female prior to entering DT shouldnt be an issue i wouldnt think.

 

[Mael]

Was it apparent what the 3 died from? I ask because my brother and I just got a few from a LFS here and 2/3 his died overnight with no signs of anything wrong, the 1 I have is fine but it seems weird his 2 went with no ill signs.

Didnt know if there was amaybe a issue with lyretails right now

 

[Amoore311]

I made multiple additions to the harem of lyretail anthias when I had my 180.

I started with 4 (1M/3F). 1 other turned male, but they all still lived together. About 2 months later I added another 4F. Then another month later another 3-4F. When I broke the tank down a years later I had all of them still alive, same two stayed male... otheres remained female.

When I added them there was a little bit of initial aggression amongst females. Nothing crazy though, and the tank had plenty of rock work and space to disperse that aggression a bit. After a couple days everyone would settle in and get back to normal anthias behavior.... eating constantly, and Males constantly pestering females for attention lol.

 

[mfinn]

Was it apparent what the 3 died from? I ask because my brother and I just got a few from a LFS here and 2/3 his died overnight with no signs of anything wrong, the 1 I have is fine but it seems weird his 2 went with no ill signs.

Didnt know if there was amaybe a issue with lyretails right now

I suspect it was because of the aggression from the largest dominate female.
On the morning of day 2, there was one dead. I think that was shipping stress as it never really got very active even at any of the feedings.

The other two were active and tried to feed, but the biggest female was always just really asserting her dominance and tried to prevent them from eating and swimming out in the open.
They were close in size.
There were no signs of disease. Color was good and no marks or lesions.
The one that is in the tank with the dominate female is a lot smaller and even though the dominate one still occasionally dive bombs it, it is still allowed to eat and even shares the same cave for sleeping.

 

[mfinn]

I made multiple additions to the harem of lyretail anthias when I had my 180.

I started with 4 (1M/3F). 1 other turned male, but they all still lived together. About 2 months later I added another 4F. Then another month later another 3-4F. When I broke the tank down a years later I had all of them still alive, same two stayed male... otheres remained female.

When I added them there was a little bit of initial aggression amongst females. Nothing crazy though, and the tank had plenty of rock work and space to disperse that aggression a bit. After a couple days everyone would settle in and get back to normal anthias behavior.... eating constantly, and Males constantly pestering females for attention lol.

Cool. The tank they are going in is my 233 and there will be a lot of room.

 

[Triggerfish]

are they in the DT yet? if so how they doing?

 

[mfinn]

are they in the DT yet? if so how they doing?

The 2 surviving females from the first order are in the display tank now and seem to be doing fine.
They are still pretty shy and only come out of the rock work when they want food.
I have 3 others in my qt tank from liveaquaria yesterday

 

[shred5]

Lyretails are aggressive. In a lot of cases you end up with one or two.. They all want to be the dominant male so they pick on the weakest till its dead and move up the ladder. Keeping a larger school can help spread out the aggression but a large school of lyretails requires a pretty big tank because of the amount of load they add to a tank..

Some people have luck with a few but my guess in some cases is they are juveniles yet. The other is maybe something is more aggressive in the tank so they act a little more normal..

In my opinion Bartlett's Anthias are even worse at that.