Maldives Lyretail Antias question???

[Dowtish]

I just recently ordered 1 male and 3 female from my LFS, and it seems that one of the "females" is on it's way to becoming a male. And the male that I have seems to know this. I have all 4 of them in a 55 QT, and I'm seeing the male really go after the morphing male. It is seperated from the other three, and gets beat up if she/he tries to hang with them. Would it be smart to just get rid of the morphing male? And if so, I could probably trade it back in to the LFS, and a get a smaller female. Or should I just go with a trio?

 

[Reef UP]

The easier thing to do would be trade it out or you could also about quadruple the amount of females you have and be ok that way to provided you have enough DT room what size tank do you have?

 

[pciscott]

I had 6, 1 male and 5 females, after about a year one of the females started to change and became the dominant male the first male is still around and they do not fight that much. If they are not going to crazy keep them, adding a few more might help. I had a trio of flame wrasses one a supermale and one of the females is changing yet they all still get along. Morphing fish are very interesting for sure. Good luck.

 

[Dowtish]

I really don'y have the room to add more, unless that's all the fish that are going into the tank. It's a 48 x 16 x 27 tall.

I am wondering if introducing a smaller female after removing the larger morphing one, will cause any issues. But this is all a guessing game at this point. It sounds like a trio is not going to work, as much as if I just went ahead and added more females.

 

[SDguy]

I agree with returning the changing female. Unless it happens naturally in a large group, I never recommend trying to force more than one lyetail male together in an average size reef.

I trio will work fine, IME.

 

[Cubbies]

I would say trio as well. I've also heard that odd numbers work better than a pair or even numbers(3,5,7. . etc). I have a trio in roughly the same size tank you have and they are working perfectly. Also got them on the small side but they are doing just fine. Remember Lyretails need at least a 125 so you can probably get away with a trio, I wouldn't try to squeeze more than that in as they are very active swimmers as well.

 

[Dowtish]

Awesome! thanks guys.

I was kind of thinking the same thing, as far as adding more. I would prefer to have a 6 foot tank in order to do a school 7 or so. I will take this guy/girl back today, and we'll see what happens when the trio goes into the DT in about 2 more weeks.