# Are Hap Species 44 thickskins always as vicious as mine are?



## KhuliLoachFan (Mar 8, 2008)

I have kept a fair number of malawi, and victoria cichilds, and this Species 44 hap from Lake Vic is perhaps the nastiest brute of a male that I have ever observed. I thought (wrongly) that the 0.75" juveniles that I had been growing in a separate tank would be fine with their parents, but maybe the parents are just about to breed again, and that's why, but they weren't in the tank five minutes, and I saw one juvenile floating up to the surface dead, with a huge chomp mark in the lower half of him. The male had bit him, breaking his neck. Not hungry, because he didn't eat him. Just aggression.

Is this kind of conspecific aggression towards fry common in Hap Species 44? I have observed increases in territorial behaviour prior to, and during spawning, in many rift lake cichlids, but never have I seen a mouth-brooding species this agressive (even deadly) towards its own progeny. 

Maybe I messed their instincts up by moving the fry out to grow them up a bit in a fry grow out tank. If I do that, maybe I shouldn't be moving them back in until they are half their parent's size or more, and then they are a lot bigger.

I was shocked. It's been a long while since I've been flat-out shocked at the behavior of my fish. 

W


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## SAMhap (Jun 20, 2010)

it really depends on the size of the adult fish and/or hunger. 0.75 inch juvenile is tiny!
not ready with adult fish yet. let them be at least 1.5 inches before u introduce some to the main tank.


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## KhuliLoachFan (Mar 8, 2008)

Oh well. I'll know better next time. Feel bad for the lil' fellow who got his neck snapped by his own dad. :-(


W


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## dynamite07 (Oct 16, 2010)

I had one almost 2 years ago. They are dangerous. I only had them in a 40 gallon. He slowly started to kill everything in the tank. The only one he never went after was a yellow lab. I eventually sold him for cheap.


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## garryism (Nov 2, 2010)

my male sp44 is crazy aggressive. he never backs down from a challenge... and is usually the instigator in all fights that used to happen in my tank.

my sp44 breeders used to be 1m and 3f... but last month, the male went a little crazy with the aggression and managed to kill two of the females in two days!!! 

seems like he was pissed off that they weren't interested at the moment. 

i have since added a new female and separated the old female (who just spat out 30+ fry)... and the male is going crazy again trying to entice the new female into spawning.

as for sp44 juvies in the same tank; i have 1.75" juvies in the tank with the breeders... and this morning, the male was on a rampage and ended up killing one of the female juvies. he literally bit off 1/3 of the juvie starting from the tail.

i put him in timeouts by sticking him in a breeder box... and he calms down after a day or two... but i must say he's ridiculously vicious when he has the urge to spawn.

my male auratus is almost 2x his size and he's freakin' scared of the sp44 male! they've had big battles and the sp44 male always comes out on top.

i think the only alpha male that's ever beat my sp44 male... or at least made my sp44 male think twice before stepping up, was one of my white top haras.

anyway, i have since separated my sp44's and put them in their own species tank.

i'm thinking of selling them all off... breeders and all.


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## KhuliLoachFan (Mar 8, 2008)

Thanks guys. I've put up some egg crate as a divider, in the tank, so the female can escape the male's violent attentions, but can still go around him if she feels like getting their fishy kind of romance on. The female can go right through the egg crate divider, but the male is stuck on the bigger side of the tank.

W


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