McCosker Wrasse Question

mylifeismyown66 · Jan 19, 2012

I recently got 1 male and 2 female McCosker wrasses for my tank hoping the male would show off and all that. Anyways the male seemingly kind of chases the females away. They are all eating and he doesnt appear to be scaring or hurting them, but not quite the action I thought it would take. I am also now questioning if it is a McCoskers. The store got more McCoskers in yesterday that had a nice bold color on their bottom fin. I have heard that the dominant female becomes a male, so maybe mine is just still young or changing over? Here is a pic..

mylifeismyown66 · Jan 19, 2012

Here is a crappy iPhone video. I didnt get him chasing them. He does not do it all the time and it isnt continous, its more like one swoop at the females. Anyways the male is almost always in the middle of the tank with a female on each side, sometimes on the same side. Excuse the quality.

evolved · Jan 19, 2012

The wrasse in the first picture is a Paracheilinus flavianalis, I'm afraid.

No worries however, so long as he's not forcing the others into hiding and isn't causing them any damage, all is well. Some occasional chasing is nothing to fret about.

mylifeismyown66 · Jan 19, 2012

Thanks for the info. I wonder if the females are also the same and not McCoskers. I could swap out the male for a male McCoskers.

mylifeismyown66 · Jan 19, 2012

I cant really seem to find pics of female McCosker or a yellowfin flasher wrasse. Can anyone tell what the females are in the video? I will try to get better pics of the females tonight. If they are McCoskers than I can just try to catch the male and switch him out for a real McCoskers.

mylifeismyown66 · Jan 19, 2012

Was tough to get pics of the females tonight. Here is the best I could get:
Female 1

Female 2

Wy Renegade · Jan 19, 2012

Don't know if this will help you or not, but it might be easier for you to compare your females to the one pictured here as flasher wrasse females or submales are notoriously difficult to distinguish.

https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/r2...f2reef-spotlight-paracheilinus-mccoskeri.html

My first "McCoskers" was also a yellowfin trio purchased from an online vendor - distinguishing any of this group can be difficult at best and with their ability to interbreed and produce hybrids, it becomes even more complicated.

mylifeismyown66 · Jan 19, 2012

Appreciate the link. it is very hard to tell with the females. I looked very closely at the stripe pattern and mine appear very similar to the link's pics. I am also thinking maybe the male is just chasing the females away because they are a different species. Anyone ever had a harem of all McCoskers and had the male just chase the females around?

evolved · Jan 19, 2012

Yeah, female/submale is extremely difficult to tell.

I can say at least that female #2 also looks to be a yellow-fin as well. I can't tell about female #1, but it's probably safe to assume the same considering you acquired them all at once.

What you're seeing is potentially normal behavior; the difficulty there is the individual attitude of any given fish.

mylifeismyown66 · Jan 20, 2012

Well thanks for everyone's input. Because I don't have a male and female mccoskers that I can get to anytime soon maybe I will just hope they get a long a little better and I will just have to swap them out when they outgrow my tank as it seems this species gets larger than the mccoskers. I'm certainly a little unhappy with the dealer they came from for messing this up. I'll have to send them an email. From the get go it seemed like something was a little off.