Angelfish fighting

[shelbidavis]

So I have two angel fish in my tank plus some other fish, but my angel is starting to chase to other angel, they never did that before and it's been five months. And he had a few nips out of his tail Was I not suppose to put two together?


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[Eggheadfish]

Hi shelbi,
From what I understand, sometimes angels will pair and sometimes they won't like each other. Typical to their cichlid nature, they can be territorial. Unfortunately sometimes that's the way it goes. What size tank do you have them in? Structuring decor to allow segregated areas and broken up lines of sight may help. I've only kept single angels so I haven't had this issue but if you search the forum there is a fair amount of info on the topic. Good luck!

 

[treemanone2003]

Hi shelbi,
From what I understand, sometimes angels will pair and sometimes they won't like each other. Typical to their cichlid nature, they can be territorial. Unfortunately sometimes that's the way it goes. What size tank do you have them in? Structuring decor to allow segregated areas and broken up lines of sight may help. I've only kept single angels so I haven't had this issue but if you search the forum there is a fair amount of info on the topic. Good luck!

Agree here. It may also be that you have two of the same sex. Males and females rarely tolerate the same sex. It could be two males fighting for dominance of the tank or two females fighting for dominance of breeding territories. As Egg asked, what size tank ? That could also be a very contributing factor too. If it's a large enough tank, I would opt to 1-create more break up of line of sight, 2-add a temporary partition to see if one/both lay eggs, or 3-rehome one of them.


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[shelbidavis]

I have a 46 gallon. I don't know if this matters at all, but I got them both at the same time when they were both like quarter size. They've gotten really big but one of them got much bigger that the other. Which is the one picking on the smaller one. I was really hoping for two of the opposite sex, darn! What does it mean to make a temporary partition?


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[Coursair]

Even breeding pairs sometimes beat the crap out of each other. Sometimes one partner is ready, and the other one is not ready to breed.

If you can, set up a spare tank as a holding tank, and move one of them out. Preferably the bully and give them a timeout for a week or two and then put him back in.

Sexing Angels is tricky.


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[treemanone2003]

To make a temp partition I would use something like this : https://www.anniescatalog.com/detail.html?prod_id=2829&cat_id=429
You may need a couple of sheets to make them fit properly, top to bottom and front to back. Use this to separate them and see what happens in the event you don't have a spare tank.


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[Luananeko]

It sounds like you may have a runt too. Angels are much harder on each other when there are decent size differences. Even if they started the same size, if one is growing unusually small it may have dwarfism genes. The larger ones tend to jump on this weakness. Typical cichlid behavior. Separating them may work for the short term, but unless the smaller one catches up in size you'll likely have the same problem once you put them back together.

 

[FishRus]

Is it better to have 1 or 2 Angels in a tank?


KCCO

 

[Luananeko]

Angels are best kept either solitary, in mated pairs, or in groups of 6 or more. Anything in between tends to result in a dominant one bullying the weakest one until it dies, or two pairing off and attacking the unpaired ones.