Boesemani behavior help?

[Shelley_lou]

Hi
I'm new to this site and fairly new to the hobby and I'm wondering if my boesemani are displaying normal behaviour?
I currently have 3 boesemani rainbow, plan on stocking up to atleast 6. Today I introduced the 3rd. They are colouring up well but I'm still unsure of how many are male/female.
So my new guy and one of the slightly bigger boesemani haven't left each other alone for a few hours. They are circling each other quite slowly and getting the occasional nip in there too. They are showing colours but not the dark blue to orange. It's more like a bruise colour to green through to a yellow.
One really can't go anywhere without the other following unless it's feeding time.
The third boesemani is mostly oblivious and swims about as though they aren't even around most of the time.
I'm a little worried as I don't want to get up in the morning and find that today's addition got too stressed by the fighting and died. Any information would be massively appreciated . I've read through a few things online but I'm yet to feel reassured.

Many thanks
Shelley x

 

[gilpi]

Could it be you have 2 males 1 female?
Last year I got a bunch of 7 rainbows, 3 boesemani and 4 blue. Could not tell back then which was male/female. Fast forward to today and I have 5 males with 2 females, talk about war! There is one definite alpha male that his job is to try and get one of the females into a corner while keeping other males away by pecking at them all day long.

 

[Shelley_lou]

It could be I suppose, as they are still quite young I haven't been able to sex them easily. Would aiming to get a couple more females next time I go to add more fish help then?

 

[fishyd]

That would help a lot. You want to try and have one male for every 2-3 females. also, just by having more will help spread aggression if you are not able to get more females.