I have two pairs of Ps. Saulosi in my 75 gal mixed Mbuna tank.
Last night, just before my fish received their last feeding for the day,
my wife and I noticed that the dominant male Saulosi had lost its
blue colors and the black barring was barely noticable on his now
yellow body.

Then, we noticed that the subdominant male had fully colored up and
was attacking my dominant male. :o

Today, I discover that there has been a rechanging of the guard and now
the dominant male is back in charge!

Anybody else experienced this? :blink:

It can get really confusing, preacherboy...I've had two male trewavasae doing this for months! I can't tell which one is my dominant male, so this past weekend, I just divided the group up into two pairs in two seperate tanks...

Yes, I know these guys aren't pairing fish, but both males are gorgeous and I don't want a dead one on my hands!

When we had that demasoni 55G set up, we had 3 males, all dominant, with 3 seperate rock piles.

How is that saulosi tank set up with rocks, preacherboy?

I bet if you put a pile in the middle (higher to break the line of sight) and one on each side, both males will move to opposite sides of the tank and colour up.

I was always under the misconception that you were supposed to scatter your rocks throughout the tank, but I tend to have alot more luck figuring out who my dominant fish are and making divided areas for them to dominate. I can't remember the last death I had to aggression by doing it this way.

Kim

PB

This kind of stuff happens all the time and really nothing to worry about.I have new Doms all the time it just depends who ate more that day....lol

Rockwork is very important as Kim says but as long as no one is doing a Soprano on the other then Id leave it as is

Derek

My Lab. Mbamba are doing the same thing right now. And a juvie male is colored up as well and seems to not be getting <bleep> for doing so, even though he's not part of the sparring.

I made my rockpiles like a flattened letter U, so each side would feel like a different territory, even in a too-small juvie tank. This seems to help some, but I gotta get that 6-foot tank soon. If I don't I know that a nasty fight will happen one of these days. And the NLS is helping them mature faster!

Don

Thanks for the replies, everyone! cheers

My rock piles are probably out of sort.

I have rock piles on each end of the tank with
a shorter amount of rock in the middle.

I did this more for my benefit than my fish,
looking back in hindsight! Nooooooo

Today is tank cleaning day, and I will try and see
if making a large rock pile in the middle of the tank
will help the situation! Now this should be good!