Lyretail Anthias Question

[bbyatv]

I have had 4 Lyretail Anthias for about 7 months and they are all very healthy and eat well. I have had one male and three femails. Recently I had another one of the females go male. I now have two females and two males. They are not fighting or even noting each other.

 

Any thoughts on why this is happening? Will the original male go female? Will the two males fight it out some day in the future? Or will I just end up with a happy set of each?

 

Thanks,

 

Bruce

[davelin315]

That's odd, there's typically only one male in each group. From what I understand, in their large groups in nature there is one male and the rest are female with a pecking order. When the male dies, the most dominant females begin to change and whichever one ends up being the dominant male will stay male while the others change back to female. I wonder if that's what will happen in your system. By the way, not sure if this is accurate or not, I seem to recall reading this somewhere but can't find it again to verify.

[rsarvis]

Something similar appears to have happened in my tank. I originally got one male and 4 females. I lost the littlest female a long while back. The largest female started turning male, but not all the way, it seems. The original male is bigger and the typical color of a male. The newer male appears to be in some sort of half-way state or something, like he's stuck in an awkward stage of puberty, kind of orange-purple, but with the fin-shape and fin-dots of a male. That transition happened quite a while ago and he's been stuck there for a long time now.

[mchippo]

Something similar appears to have happened in my tank. I originally got one male and 4 females. I lost the littlest female a long while back. The largest female started turning male, but not all the way, it seems. The original male is bigger and the typical color of a male. The newer male appears to be in some sort of half-way state or something, like he's stuck in an awkward stage of puberty, kind of orange-purple, but with the fin-shape and fin-dots of a male. That transition happened quite a while ago and he's been stuck there for a long time now.

 

I have the same situation in my tank...Had 1 male and 6 females at the beginning. I now have 1 male, 5 females, and 1 stuck in the middle of transition. The original male I had was never very aggressive about keeping his harem together so perhaps my "stuck in the middle" fish is trying to assume leadership? I dunno....