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Well, the Bartletts have been in for a month now I guess, out of the six one wasn't a Bartlett but had been, and remains accepted. We had originally already identified two of the remaining five as males. Now a month later, the second male has been cast out of the fold, but seems fine otherwise and last night we saw that two others were displaying as males as well, so out of a group of five Bartletts, we have four males and one female! So far, there is little to no bickering, they feed and sleep together and keep fairly close proximity to each other. Will they change back to females? I don't know, we'll have to wait and see, assuming things don't start getting nasty.
Chris
PS Anybody got any estrogen I can supplement their feed with?
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Trouble in the house of Bartlett?
#3
Tony B 
- Trigger Fish
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Posted 08 July 2009 - 11:00 AM
ben, on Jul 8 2009, 10:07 AM, said:
start feeding boiled egg chris, plenty of oestrogen in them,lol
I had 12 bartletts in my 1000 litre tank. I found at about half turned into males. Just wait till they start spawning, you will see some fireworks!
When they're spawning the males batter the hell out of each other locking jaws and, they often end up looking tatty with damaged mouths from all the fighting. They are one of the most aggressive fish I have kept, however, they only fought with their own kin.
#5
chriss
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Posted 09 July 2009 - 03:15 PM
On a brighter note, for the first time ever, I witnessed a pair of fish spawning last night, the scooter blennies. We've had a pair for a while, but they never did anything but play scooter chase and then we lost the male during the tank change over. We got a replacement at the weekend and it seems she's got the hots for him 
Chris
Chris
#11
chriss
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Posted 10 July 2009 - 10:37 AM
Bomber, I think my boy would say his is larger than yours, but thats by the way, anyhow back to the anthias...
I've been reading some great threads on reef central and elsewhere on Bartletts. It seems it is VERY common to have groups with high male to female ratios, very few people, if any, seem to be able to prevent them changing to males even when other males are already present.
Those that have witnessed them in the wild report that there are very large numbers of males, more so than you might expect.
It also seems they can change very quickly, like in a few days, and since they naturally want to change to a male unless it is suppressed from doing so by an existing male one theory is that during transit and shipping and holding time where they have less social structure and are probably more concerned about wtf is going on, they can change without the harrassment. Whether the key is gender ratio or population density no one is really sure yet. The more I read, it really seems to be a very common occurance for a group to turn all male and possibly leave just one female, but this doens't necessarily result in world war three like you might expect.
Regretably, it seems they are probably the most aggressive anthias out there, but thats not quite as bad as it might at first sound. With a lot of room and multiple males, they can keep their distance and they don't know which one to pick on. Folk have added more and more females, only to have them turn male within weeks.
I'm going to dig thru the few photos I took of them after they were first introduced to see what the original ratios were.
Chris
I've been reading some great threads on reef central and elsewhere on Bartletts. It seems it is VERY common to have groups with high male to female ratios, very few people, if any, seem to be able to prevent them changing to males even when other males are already present.
Those that have witnessed them in the wild report that there are very large numbers of males, more so than you might expect.
It also seems they can change very quickly, like in a few days, and since they naturally want to change to a male unless it is suppressed from doing so by an existing male one theory is that during transit and shipping and holding time where they have less social structure and are probably more concerned about wtf is going on, they can change without the harrassment. Whether the key is gender ratio or population density no one is really sure yet. The more I read, it really seems to be a very common occurance for a group to turn all male and possibly leave just one female, but this doens't necessarily result in world war three like you might expect.
Regretably, it seems they are probably the most aggressive anthias out there, but thats not quite as bad as it might at first sound. With a lot of room and multiple males, they can keep their distance and they don't know which one to pick on. Folk have added more and more females, only to have them turn male within weeks.
I'm going to dig thru the few photos I took of them after they were first introduced to see what the original ratios were.
Chris
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