Senegal Bichir aggression question

[Ponera]

So we got 2 teeny baby senegals a few months and they are now about 3.5 inches long. They are in a 45 gallon bowfront tank to grow them out, we'll up it to something bigger when they are larger. It has a filter rated to about 75 gallons. The tank only has the two small bichers and a random fat bronze cory, as well as 4 nerite snails and 4 black cone snails. The bioload is so low that we can't even get algae to grow and duckweed keeps dying on us. Water quality is 0's across the board. There are lots of places to hide on the bottom.

One bichir is growing faster than the other. We suspect this one is female. It is more nippy than the other one and is a bit of a bully. We've noticed the smaller one tends to hang out near the surface all the time now. There is no sign of damage to any fins and both eat well. They never outright fight. I've read that younger bichirs can be nippier.

Are female senegals meaner? Are smaller bichirs nippier like this and should things calm down when they get older?

 

[SpecialKay]

It all depends on the individual fish, rather than the sex. I never had nippy problems with any of my female senegals, but one of my males gets really snappy during feeding time.

If both are getting enough food, one just may be a slow grower. Juvenile bichirs also tend to hang around the top of the water column near shade for protection, so that's not

 

[Ponera]

I've just never had one be snippy like this before. Kind a little jerk.

 

[Caveden]

So we got 2 teeny baby senegals a few months and they are now about 3.5 inches long. They are in a 45 gallon bowfront tank to grow them out, we'll up it to something bigger when they are larger. It has a filter rated to about 75 gallons. The tank only has the two small bichers and a random fat bronze cory, as well as 4 nerite snails and 4 black cone snails. The bioload is so low that we can't even get algae to grow and duckweed keeps dying on us. Water quality is 0's across the board. There are lots of places to hide on the bottom.

One bichir is growing faster than the other. We suspect this one is female. It is more nippy than the other one and is a bit of a bully. We've noticed the smaller one tends to hang out near the surface all the time now. There is no sign of damage to any fins and both eat well. They never outright fight. I've read that younger bichirs can be nippier.

Are female senegals meaner? Are smaller bichirs nippier like this and should things calm down when they get older?

Developing hierarchy, and smaller bichirs known to be more aggressive. Best advisable to get more than 2 bichirs to even out the aggression.

 

[Ponera]

Developing hierarchy, and smaller bichirs known to be more aggressive. Best advisable to get more than 2 bichirs to even out the aggression.

My experience has never echoed that at all, though I've only ever had males and only ever had four- I had 3 in one tank before that got hit hard by bacteria years ago and I lost everyone. Then I lost that solo bichir recently to that odd lung issue (there are pics if you are able to look at my post history, it was kind of wild). Could be small sample size etc.

Maybe I am interpreting the behaviour of the smaller one incorrectly too- I am not often up before the light, but was up before today. It was frolicking just fine on the bottom with the larger one, no aggression etc. Once the light comes on, it's a different story. Perhaps it is just a comfort thing. I do have some pretty good light on there to try to encourage algal growth- we got a bunch of snails (as mentioned in the OP) because we had a ton of algae back with the original bichir in this tank. We finally have that coming back, actually. Maybe turning it down would help encourage less surface "hiding"?