Introducing a new Mr to Mrs? Advice on cupiding required

Hi

Sadly Mr Kribensis died at the weekend . Even more sadly I didn't spot it until *somebody* had made a bit of a lunch of him (I'm hoping it wasn't his wife who was hungry) so I can't be absolutely sure what did it - though everything else seems healthy. However, given I also found my armoured shrimp dead in Mr and Mrs Kribensis' house/cave - I'm kind of assuming it was a battle that they both lost.

Anyway. Female Kribensis is looking very red bellied and lonely without her paramour. My question would be - can I just introduce any male Krib into the tank and she'll be OK with him? It's very difficult to try with about 3 over here as LFS are much less open to taking fish back once you've found which one she favours (and frankly the journey is long and stressful for them as well).

I'm also worried that if I wait too long she's going to start going all wiggly bottomed (you know how they do that right!?!) at one of her teenage male offspring (who I'll move when they're bigger).

Thanks for your help on this one
R

Hmmmm.

Introduced a new male last night.. he's only adolescent - but I had high hopes. Female is beyond grumpy - with some severe fin nips not just to the male - but also to anything else nearbye. This seems to have caused quite a territorial furore in the tank. Even Steve the generally docile red tailed shark suddenly got in touch with his more evil side.

Mayhem commenced.

Will update you all tonight once i'm back from work and can check to see whether any of it got too nasty. So far I'm hoping the huge amount of plants and rocks has meant that at the very least smaller fish can get out of the way of the warring egos. Meanwhile if anyone knows any tricks for getting my femail krib to chill out and enjoy her toyboy - let me know!!!

Sigh. It's never easy being a mum - and with fish it's very hard to say 'stop arguing or you can all get out and walk'.

R

Ok.. well I'll hold out about a week before dragging the poor pimply nearly grown up Mr Krib out and putting him in the guppy and neon tank where he may belong!!!!!!

If worst comes to the worst she may end up choosing one of her two offspring - (who've now left home and hang out around the java moss like mall rats). It's all very west country (that's west of Britain where allegedly all our inbreeding occurs (allegedly because I'm from the west country!)) and I'm not sure I can deal with such incest in my little family - but there we go.

Good lord. Anyone want to borrow a bracket?

R

You should meet the weirdos inhabiting my tank then....

I blame it on the parents.

Oops. That's me then.
R

Amazingly enough it's a fast moving Betta. Yeah I know there's a whole thread on how they don't like to swim around and prefer to be in a cup - this is proof that if you put them in a 30g community tank then they'll swim with the rest of them. This particular baby was so fond of food that whenever I came near the tank he used to come screeching up to follow my finger on the glass - for special treats.

His name was queenie (for my flatmate who's a boy who likes boys if you know what I mean). Sadly, he died because I didn't have enough knowledge at the time to realise you shouldn't put them with male guppies due to mistaken identity issues. He took out about 14 male guppies when he went though (brave boy).

R