Adding to the harem

[overflowin]

I currently have 3 lyretail anthias in my 220. one male, 2 female. it seems that the male is always hanging out with one of the ladies, and the other is just off swimming by herself. i got these fish from a local reefer that was moving out of town, and he accidentally took out the 3rd female with some of the live rock.

my question for the more experienced anthias keepers out there is will adding a 3rd (and 4th?) female to the tank rekindle the schooling instinct? any special steps to successfully adding the fish and having it accepted to the existing group?

 

[Drewl117]

That's a good question. I would like to no this too, I just have 1 female and wanted to add a male and more females one my new tank is ready.

 

[Stevenliu9]

Tagging on. I am considering lyre tail anthias too and am deciding whether to include any male in the collection or leave it strictly female. Hearing experts' experiences may help with my decision.

 

[donut0079]

Tagging on. I am considering lyre tail anthias too and am deciding whether to include any male in the collection or leave it strictly female. Hearing experts' experiences may help with my decision.

I'm pretty sure that strictly female will cause one to turn male.

 

[ca1ore]

my question for the more experienced anthias keepers out there is will adding a 3rd (and 4th?) female to the tank rekindle the schooling instinct? any special steps to successfully adding the fish and having it accepted to the existing group?

Lyretails aren't going to truly 'school' in your tank regardless of how many you have. They may 'hang out' together a bit or they may not. All of my larger anthias are distributed across my tank most of the time. Only anthias I currently have that shoal (not school) are resplendents - and I think that is because they are much smaller than the other fish and easily intimidated thus they stay together for protection.

I have kept lyretails where I bought one male and many females, or where I just bought many females and had one tern males subsequently. Both approaches can work, though you need to be careful if buying a male that none of the females are transitioning. Buying smaller females helps to avoid this. Regardless of the approach, lyretails do have a habit of slowly picking off the lowest female (rather like blue green chromis). The only way to avoid this long-term is to make sure you are feeding adequately.

 

[RGS2]

My story for you: I had a male and 3 female lyretails in my 225g for a long time. One of the females "disappeared" never to be found. So I bought two more females as we really like the group, color, etc. in our tank.

Couple months later the male lyretail has an injured eye (popeye) so he hides in the rocks for 2 weeks while it heals. In that short time span, the dominate female quickly transitioned to a male and then killed the original male.

So, I'm back the the orignial set up - 1 male and 3 females.

If you put all females in the tank, one will definitely switch to male.