Lyretail anthias aggressive

[bubbaque]

Is anyone else's lyretail anthias a total ******? I had a group 3 and the male is very aggressive to anything his size. I have had them roughly 10 months now. He chases my purple firefish, chormis, shrimp goby (I seen the anthias grab it and fling it around). I added a leopard wrasse and he chases it as well, even though it is bigger then he is. I would think it could be just his personality but I see the two smaller anthias chace anything their size as well.

I am thinking about trapping them but they are beautiful fish and would like to keep them if I could. I just wish I could do something about the aggression.

Any thoughts?

 

[ritter6788]

Lyretail males can be a handful. If you've ever seen them on an actual reef or in pics/videos in the ocean there are usually huge groups of lyretails and those males have to be dominant to keep their harem and space. I think that behavior confined in a reef tank makes them more agressive and harder to keep with other fish including their own species.

 

[Leslie Tabor]

Yep. My Zeus is a big p.i.t.a!! Fortunately my Midas is also a b**** so they fight with each other. Now, the funny part is, the Midas is totally the boss! Zeus tries but even he fears the Midas! Lol

 

[davocean]

I've had different groups over the years, and most of what I saw was just darting at the females, maybe once in a while darting at other fish, but my last group I did notice the male was a little more aggressive, he happened to be South African where my previous were Fiji, I'm not sure if that makes a difference or not.
Tank size could also be a factor as well as your stock of fish, and I do make sure to have a number of females to the male to both keep him busy and spread that aggression around among his harem.
I've never seen anything like what you are describing, but I do once in a while see someone saying they are pretty aggressive in their tanks

 

[bubbaque]

He seems super aggressive to me. It's a 180 gallon so you would think there would be plenty of room. Most of the aggression is towards the female anthias but the other timid fish get it a lot also. The shrimp goby and firefish hide always because of him. Today I was talking to the wife about the firefish and she said she forgot we had one because it hides so much because of the anthias.

 

[davocean]

Well a 180g should be plenty big enough.
Once in a while I'll see someone I know is very experienced say similar as you, not quite to your description, but enough to make me scratch my head and wonder why.
I always liked the purple males best(fiji) and once I added what were sold to me as South african females(which I really liked for the blue line at eyes the fiji females do not have) and I thought I had a great mix, but the Females grew much faster than the male and one changed sex to male and got alot larger than my original fiji male, and that made me wonder if region collected had any affect on personality, because up till then I had always only had fiji's both male and female, and they were noticeably more passive, their "aggressive" behavior for lack of a better word was merely darting quickly and mostly just at their harem.

 

[nick0206]

I bought one male and two female lyretail anthias a few months ago.
The male is very aggressive towards the females. One died after a couple of weeks from being beaten. He also beats and chases the other one, but she has gotten used to this attitude for about 3 months now.
Is this normal?
I wanted more anthias initially, but I took the last two females. I plan to buy him 3-4 more if I get a chance. I hope that his aggression might decrease a little.
What do you think?