Current setup. Left 1/3 is quarantine for a torn up fish. 
Down the Tropheus hole
- Thread starter fishguy1978
- Start date
One of the challenges w trophs is territories. As @RD. mentioned, an aggro male will cover 6’ in a flash, and at 13” wide you will most likely have ongoing challenges with a male heavy group, or a hyperdominant male.
No offense, but the way you have your hard scape placed is contributing to your aggression problem. It’s aesthetically a good layout, but the dominant male will possess and guard that whole rock scape as his own. It would be of benefit to have a rock pile (territory) towards each end and open space between where there’s a chance the ones being chased can mill around and escape constant individual attention.
I would suggest once you have raised the juvies to 1.5-2” TL in the 220gal that you make that your troph tank. Set it up as I previously mentioned for your best chance at a harmonious group, and when able, if breeding is your goal, slim down to 3-4M and as many females as you have
No offense, but the way you have your hard scape placed is contributing to your aggression problem. It’s aesthetically a good layout, but the dominant male will possess and guard that whole rock scape as his own. It would be of benefit to have a rock pile (territory) towards each end and open space between where there’s a chance the ones being chased can mill around and escape constant individual attention.
I would suggest once you have raised the juvies to 1.5-2” TL in the 220gal that you make that your troph tank. Set it up as I previously mentioned for your best chance at a harmonious group, and when able, if breeding is your goal, slim down to 3-4M and as many females as you have
Agree with @danotaylor - in fact I mention this in my sticky on bloat. When conversing with Mark Young years ago (at that time a collector & exporter of Tropheus living on the shores of Lake Tanganyika) he told me that in his experience dominant males would stop chasing at the 6-8ft mark, so he built all of his concrete vats 12 ft. Mark's large vats were also typically void of any type of structure that a dom male might claim as being theirs. No rocks = no territory = less aggression. Having said that, I once grew out a group of Kambimbwe Red Rainbows in a bare tank, and the dom male claimed the side of the tank where the thickest algae grew. lol No serious aggression, but still. I also once watched a very small (maybe 1") Bemba claim the tanks sponge filter as his territory, and chased away any of his siblings that came near it.
Dan is spot on, the LAST thing you want is rocks/structure in one continuous row from one end of the tank to the other. In a 6ft tank, best to try for one territory/rock structure at each end.
Dan is spot on, the LAST thing you want is rocks/structure in one continuous row from one end of the tank to the other. In a 6ft tank, best to try for one territory/rock structure at each end.
Rescaped the 90g. More hides and open area. 
Definitely better than before, but if you'll notice the 2 rock piles take up more than 50% of the available footprint. This means the 2 most dominant males will possess more than 50% of the tank space, and the rest will duke it out for the rest. In my 125gal I have 3 piles, but I also have about 50 trophs to disperse the aggression. With small groups like yours I would dedicate 3-5 rocks in a small pile about 4" from each end of the tank and leave the rest open. Even though there is not really any plants in the rocky shoreline tropheus habitat, placing some tall plastic plants can help break up the sight lines to help ease the aggression as well.
The hides are useless for adults and everyone bigger than 2" because the rock piles will be occupied by 2 or maybe 3 dominant fish. The dominant fish may tolerate fry. I would try to form 3 rock formations each consisting of 1 to maximum 3 rocks. Bigger single rocks have the advantage that they may form more than one territory if you are lucky.
Here are the territories in my tank with 5 dominant fish ( 3/1 wc and 1 F1). The two smallest territories are more often disputed than the big ones and one of the WC males takes sometimes breaks in the group. The most dominant fish is the F1 occupying the whole rock formation on the right side. I had only built it to have more fry survive. With two rocks less there were originally two territories on the right side.
Agree with the other gents. When using rocks, I always preferred larger granite boulders, kind of a less is more way of thinking. Taller boulders also creates line of sight breaks, and aesthetically I also liked the look. It took a while to find larger boulders with flat bottoms, but time at a local wholesale supply yard did the trick. I place them directly on to the glass, then add sand, that way no amount of digging will ever cause an issue with large boulders falling over.
The real key I think will be getting a larger group formed, one hyper Dom male tropheus is not a good thing, no matter how you scape your tank.
The real key I think will be getting a larger group formed, one hyper Dom male tropheus is not a good thing, no matter how you scape your tank.
one of my African set ups from years back. Only 8 rocks, but they totalled approx 225 pounds. Those are the types of boulders I looked for. Large, smooth granite boulders, similar to what is found in the Rift Lakes. This layout is not how I would have designed the scape for trophs, I would have gone with a larger grouping at each end, and maybe one large line of site break more in the middle.