Introducing leopard wrasse female to established male

[SaltyT]

No. He allows her to eat. She tends to stay lower and pick at rocks and he just stares at her and always stays within a foot. Stalking is the best way I can describe it. No direct confrontation just not letting her out of his sight. I will keep a close eye whenever I’m home.

Glad to hear that he allows her to eat and hasn't intimidated her back into the sand. If she disappears into the sand and doesn't come back out for a day or so then you'll know that his stalking has become aggressive. Hopefully that doesn't happen and he starts ignoring her soon.

 

[i cant think]

No. He allows her to eat. She tends to stay lower and pick at rocks and he just stares at her and always stays within a foot. Stalking is the best way I can describe it. No direct confrontation just not letting her out of his sight. I will keep a close eye whenever I’m home.

This is similar to what my Jade is doing currently, it’s not aggressive but it is chasing. If possible then try feed a few more times to get him to realise it’s not any food issue. And try get a third leopard, that will spread any aggression out. I don’t quite know if it has to be the same species as the leopard in there because I’ve never really tried a trio or pair of wrasses. I can’t really say much on same species either since by two lubbocki males have always gotten along with just a bit of flashing for dominance in the evenings.

Another thing I’d recommend is watching your tank either VERY early in the morning (Well before lights on) and seeing how many amphipods/copepods you can see. In my 4’ tank there’s about 10 amphipods on just one side. So food source is most likely helping the aggression between my Halichoeres wrasses to go down. Feeding them after introduction works VERY well too, I do this with all of my fish when I add a new one in, it shows the old guys (Especially the tang and Jade wrasse) that there’s plenty of food to go around and if needed - although I rarely do - I will bump up the pod population.

 

[Perpetual Novice]

Glad to hear that he allows her to eat and hasn't intimidated her back into the sand. If she disappears into the sand and doesn't come back out for a day or so then you'll know that his stalking has become aggressive. Hopefully that doesn't happen and he starts ignoring her soon.

This is similar to what my Jade is doing currently, it’s not aggressive but it is chasing. If possible then try feed a few more times to get him to realise it’s not any food issue. And try get a third leopard, that will spread any aggression out. I don’t quite know if it has to be the same species as the leopard in there because I’ve never really tried a trio or pair of wrasses. I can’t really say much on same species either since by two lubbocki males have always gotten along with just a bit of flashing for dominance in the evenings.

Another thing I’d recommend is watching your tank either VERY early in the morning (Well before lights on) and seeing how many amphipods/copepods you can see. In my 4’ tank there’s about 10 amphipods on just one side. So food source is most likely helping the aggression between my Halichoeres wrasses to go down. Feeding them after introduction works VERY well too, I do this with all of my fish when I add a new one in, it shows the old guys (Especially the tang and Jade wrasse) that there’s plenty of food to go around and if needed - although I rarely do - I will bump up the pod population.

So good news and bad news. The bad news is the stalking has turned r into harassment. No nipping yet but he will occasionally chase her until she buries in the sand. But I’ll see her again just an hour later so it’s possible she just found a good hiding spot and never burried. But the times she’s been absent from view were all after I noticed excessive chasing around the tank.

but as bad as that sounds it has been very inconsistent. Often he will lose interest after forcing her into a cramped area he doesn’t fit well in and she will swim right out seconds later and resume picking at rocks. Other times I’ll come back after seeing bad chasing to find him reduced back to stalking and watching her while she picks at rocks as if nothing is wrong.

I can confirm with confidence that they are both the same species of leopard wrasse so they should be theoretically compatible. And based on the size of the female I think it’s likely she never started transitioning.

lastly there have been no signs of interest from the female towards my frozen foods I feed the tank. The male learned to love it a while ago and is a pig about eating so in that regard they don’t compete for food. But the frenzy that results from feeding seems to get him more excited and while he’s not distracted by feeding he seems more belligerent towards the female around feedings.

 

[i cant think]

So, the bit about same species being compatible isn’t actually 100% correct. These fish can be rather territorial and many people prefer to keep Halichoeres and Macropharyngodon in multiples (1 male to 2-3, sometimes even 4 females). This reduces aggression SO much and spreads it out.
Yes, same species are possible however in the wild you rarely see just a pair (Keeping just pairs of wrasse occurs much more easily in Anampses), you’ll often see a few males with a lot of females surrounding them. So a male won’t always be aggressive to other males or transitional males but can be aggressive to females.
Any photos of the two? Or even any idea on size?

 

[Perpetual Novice]

So, the bit about same species being compatible isn’t actually 100% correct. These fish can be rather territorial and many people prefer to keep Halichoeres and Macropharyngodon in multiples (1 male to 2-3, sometimes even 4 females). This reduces aggression SO much and spreads it out.
Yes, same species are possible however in the wild you rarely see just a pair (Keeping just pairs of wrasse occurs much more easily in Anampses), you’ll often see a few males with a lot of females surrounding them. So a male won’t always be aggressive to other males or transitional males but can be aggressive to females.
Any photos of the two? Or even any idea on size?

thanks for the anampses recommendation. I hadn’t heard that although I doubt I’ll ever find that many of them within my budget. I did have luck with a China wrasse in the past so maybe that’s a possibility.

As for the sizes of the leopard wrasse s I’m my tank. The male is maybe 5 inches and the female around 3

last things I noticed before the lights went out yesterday were that the male seemed to lose interest in the female if she remained in the lower third of the tank or so. She also seemed to figure out quickly that my male leopard goes to sleep around 8 pm which means she has free reign if the tank from there on.

i am paying very close attention to her body condition since I haven’t seen her eat any frozen food yet but she’s constantly foraging so she must just need time to train. I’m just glad it seems she can sustain herself with pods only to an extent. Especially in spite of the male constantly disrupting her hunting.

 

[Perpetual Novice]

So, the bit about same species being compatible isn’t actually 100% correct. These fish can be rather territorial and many people prefer to keep Halichoeres and Macropharyngodon in multiples (1 male to 2-3, sometimes even 4 females). This reduces aggression SO much and spreads it out.
Yes, same species are possible however in the wild you rarely see just a pair (Keeping just pairs of wrasse occurs much more easily in Anampses), you’ll often see a few males with a lot of females surrounding them. So a male won’t always be aggressive to other males or transitional males but can be aggressive to females.
Any photos of the two? Or even any idea on size?

So I’ve been watching closely how the two of them have been interacting. It seems to have settled down to where the male and female generally go about their own business until they cross paths. Then the male half heartedly chases her away for a second or two. As soon as she’s a foot or two away he seems to lose interest. More importantly she remains unfazed and will even dart away only to pause mid chase to pick at a rock before darting further out of sight. She doesn’t seem much bothered by this routine. She isn’t losing weight as far as I can tell and she’s always out when the lights are on.

in fact it only gets a little worse when I walk up to the tank because the male seems concerned with making sure she keeps her distance from the top in case I feed the tank lol. She still hasn’t taken much interest in frozen food unless it has settled on the bottom though. Although it’s not as though she doesn’t get a chance. It floats right past her. Nothing to do with harassment during feeding as the male gets preoccupied once chum is in the water.

 

[i cant think]

So I’ve been watching closely how the two of them have been interacting. It seems to have settled down to where the male and female generally go about their own business until they cross paths. Then the male half heartedly chases her away for a second or two. As soon as she’s a foot or two away he seems to lose interest. More importantly she remains unfazed and will even dart away only to pause mid chase to pick at a rock before darting further out of sight. She doesn’t seem much bothered by this routine. She isn’t losing weight as far as I can tell and she’s always out when the lights are on.

in fact it only gets a little worse when I walk up to the tank because the male seems concerned with making sure she keeps her distance from the top in case I feed the tank lol. She still hasn’t taken much interest in frozen food unless it has settled on the bottom though. Although it’s not as though she doesn’t get a chance. It floats right past her. Nothing to do with harassment during feeding as the male gets preoccupied once chum is in the water.

I think it’s just a matter of time and she’ll eat, but other than that that’s great news. You may find the female will display dorsal fins in the future when she’s more established and the male is infront of her. My radiant and Jade do this, if the Jade is infront of the radiant both of them stick their fins up and swim past eachother, they do the odd chase but recently it’s really calmed down, I wonder if I have a relatively docile Jade.

 

[Perpetual Novice]

I think it’s just a matter of time and she’ll eat, but other than that that’s great news. You may find the female will display dorsal fins in the future when she’s more established and the male is infront of her. My radiant and Jade do this, if the Jade is infront of the radiant both of them stick their fins up and swim past eachother, they do the odd chase but recently it’s really calmed down, I wonder if I have a relatively docile Jade.

That’s an awesome evaluation to hear! I also just added a male melanurus to the tank as I came across a large one at a great price and my last one broke its jaw a few months back and passed a few weeks ago. (Hence the wrasse restocking)

that addition seems to have gone very well. Since adding the melanurus (same size as male leopard) the leopard seems to have lost his zeal for being top wrasse and all three wrasses now generally ignore eachother completely. This has been true the last 3 days. They all are awake all day and asleep at night. All pick at rocks and only the female leopard hasn’t started eating frozen yet. But her body condition is still good so I’m not worried.