cuteusagi

Hi Everyone!!

My husband and I just love our Bolivian Ram (a female) and we decided to get another today, and picked up a male (as that is the only gender the lfs had). Unfortunately, the female was very aggressive with the male and started chasing and sparring him. The male, however, did nothing to counteract and just tried to stay out of the way. None of the other fish had any problem with the new male ram.

We put a divider up to separate the 2, and are hoping that the male will get a little more comfortable in the tank and the female will see the ram on the other side, but I wanted to ask...

Is there anything else to do and is this really common? Being that they seem to be so peaceful, we didn't think getting another would be a problem.

Thanks always for all your great input!

Chief_waterchanger

Rearrange tank decor so that it breaks line-of-sight better, or put them in a larger tank, such as a 55g.

good luck

cuteusagi

Would breaking the line of sight eliminate the female's aggression, or would it just slow it down? She was trying to get to him through plants earlier and was pretty relentless about it, which is why we put the tank divider in.

Chief_waterchanger

Sadly it would just slow her down. Your best bet would be using a larger tank, but the divider is your cheapest bet.

As always, best of luck.

cuteusagi

Unfortunately, we just purchased our 29 gallon tank, and as we are poor graduate students, there is no way to get a 55 gallon in our budget. Should we consider returning the fish to the store? If we do return one of the rams, should we keep the new, docile male or return the aggressive female?

Dino

Personally, I would remove the aggressive female.

cuteusagi

Just for an update, we did take the aggressive female back to our lfs and exchanged her for a java fern!! We'll try getting some more Rams a little later on.

armadillo

Yeah I agree, java fern is DEFINITELY less aggressive, LOL.