Novice needs advice :)

[eitakppurk]

Does anyone have any advice for when you have kept a calvus on her own with shell dwellers for over a year and now she is extremely sassy whenever you try to introduce more altolamps into the tank? I have tried moving the rocks around and keeping the light off, to no avail, and am wondering if she's just been on her own for too long to ever coexist in a tank with other calvus or comps. What do you all think?

Thanks!

[Ron]

I think that it is easier to let fish grow up together than to introduce them as adults.

In this instance, what size is the tank? If the tank were large enough (3'-4' perhaps), I don't think it'd be a problem to set her up at one side of it with her favorite shell(s)/rocks and make a couple of new places for the second one to hide across other portions of the tank.

Another trick that sometimes works is to move a more aggressive fish to another tank for a while, introduce new fish, and rearrange the original tank before adding the aggressor back.

[eitakppurk]

Thanks!

She's in a forty long so it's 4' across. Moving her out for a bit sounds like a good idea because I have tried to compartmentalize the tank with rocks and she will just go around pestering the other guys spots even though she has a "home base" that she comes back to. 

If that doesn't work then I'm going to look into a new Tanganyikan species to add to the tank, like julies or enantiopus ( will have to check into compatibility and requirements, don't know much about those guys).

[Ron]

Enantiopus are really pretty, but would do better in a slightly larger/wider tank to do well with lots of open sand space.

Another rock-dwelling species might fit in well. A pair of julies for example. Most, if not all, of the Neolamprologus or Lamprologus species are rock-dwellers as well. Two of my other favorites beyond julies would be Neolamprologus caudopunctatus and Neolamprologus leleupi. The caudopunks you might even get away with 2 pairs in the right aquascaping (they also might try to steal a shell or two to live in as well, as they toe the line between rock-dwelling and shell-dwelling).