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Black phantom tetra

Richard40

Member
Joined
14 Jan 2020
Messages
321
Location
Manchester
I have 3 males and one female. The males have started to chase each other to compete for the female. My question is do I need to reduced the Male numbers to either one or two?
 
You are seeing social sparring. With phantoms it's basically just a "I'm more impressive than you" show for dominance and you'd be unlucky for it to do much damage. Personally if I was you I wouldn't reduce the numbers but actually increase them if you had space by getting more females so each male had two or three. Its actually more rewarding to keep these types of fish in larger groups as you get to witness more interesting behaviour.
 
You need more, not fewer males to spread out the aggression so not one fish is targeted. IME all tall body tetra are aggressive, so you need 6 or more to manage the aggression. Males will fight one another one time, and shoal another time. If you have large tankmates, they will be threatened to shoal more often. The thin body tetra, such as rummy nose, black, glo light, neon and cardinal tetra are peaceful tetra that rarely engage in male fighting. Rasboras, which look like tetra, are tight and peaceful schooler.
 
I don’t really have room for anymore. I have 35 fish in total in 135litre tank. Probably 5-10 too many still.

1 L236 Plec
1 bristlenose
6 rummynose tetra
2 female pearl gourami
1 Male pearl gourami
8 Neon tetras
4 Apistogramma borelli. 3 of which are babies
8 glass catfish
4 black phantom tetra 3 males and 1 female
 
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