Aggressive/Boisterous Boesemani

Hi, I'm hoping that someone can chime in on my small issue. I recently stocked some rainbows in my 75 Gallon community. I got 3 Red Irian and 3 Boesemani. All of them are doing great, but the most colorful and beautiful boesemanI is a bit of a jerk.. Especially in the morning (which I know is fairly normal for rainbowfish), but sometimes he does it in the evening too.

He's not nipping and he mostly chases the other rainbows, but every once in a while he'll chase away my cardinals, which I think are starting to get stressed a bit. Usually they're out and about, but for the past two days they've been mostly chilling in my plants. I have a feeling that the boesemanI is trying to breed, and he's not happy that my female picked the more calm one of the two. I saw them doing their dance and swimming together and any time the bigger male saw them he would break them up.

I guess my question is if this kind of behavior comes and goes every once in while depending on whether he wants to breed. Or is he going to be like this all the time. Do they grow out of it? He's only about 2.5 inches right now.

I don't want to give him up because he's beautiful, but if he keeps this up and stresses out the other fish I'll have no choice.

Just in case someone asks my water parameters are 0-0-20.

Thanks

 

If you add more, he'll likely be less bully-ish. They're schooling fish, and he would benefit from being in a larger group.

 

Thanks, that's my plan, I'm just trying to find a good breed in my area.

Do you think it needs to be other boesemani? Or can it be a different subspecies? Right now the red irians and boesemanI are schooling together.

 

Thanks, that's my plan, I'm just trying to find a good breed in my area.

Do you think it needs to be other boesemani? Or can it be a different subspecies? Right now the red irians and boesemanI are schooling together.

I'd go with more Boesemani.

 

I've a bit of experience with Boeseman's as I have bred, raised and kept a wild strain of them for many years so here's my advice.

For a (relatively) peaceful tank I'd recommend keeping a male and three females.

A dominant male will often attack any other males.

They can grow very large, mine grew to 8" in length in a 110 gallon six foot aquarium (pic of one of mine below).

At this size they are certainly not suitable for keeping with Cardinal Tetras which they will either eat or intimidate.




If you decide Boeseman's are not for you and you want medium shoaling fish I would recommend Congo Tetras and Arnold’s Red-eyed Tetra (Arnoldichthys spilopterus) which I find far more peaceful.

Also my Arnold's lived a very long time over 16 years. I rate them very highly and yet they hardly get a mention.

 

Thanks for everyone's input. I picked up some more female boesemanI to spread out the breeding behavior a bit more. I'll see how it goes.

I think also figured out why my cardinals were a bit off for the past couple days. It got really hot in my house, so I checked the temperature of the tank and it was about 5 degrees higher than normal.

I turned on the AC and the fish are starting to act more like themselves again.

 

Yeah right now I have 2 males, one younger one that is extremely healthy and one that is old that I recently got from someone who was trying to get rid of it. The smaller one picks on the larger one a bit but I just ordered 5 more boesemani's so hopefully that will no longer be a problem.