Kribensis behavior?

I have kept and breed kribs for many years. Each pair is different. At the moment I have a pair that will kill the whole tank even when they're not breeding. They stay side by side always and have breed several times. She is almost 3" he is almost 4.5" and both are killer predators. Yet I have had some in the past that did great in community tanks. Every once in a while you can get a female that will kill the male after breeding but it's not common. I found keeping them seperated in the same tank worked the best.
 
Just tried letting her out again as an experiment, as the male was looking quite a bit better and she was not at all happy in her little net breeder.

They seemed to do ok... for about 5 minutes. Then she started chasing him around the tank again. *eyeroll*

Got this picture after she'd been out for about 15 minutes; he still looked OK at this point:
kribsbeforeandafter3.jpg


20 minutes after that, though, she was still chasing him around and he now looked like this:
kribsbeforeandafter4.jpg


So she went back in her cage and she's back to sulking. I'll probably leave her there until Sunday afternoon and try again.
 
Another update...

I let the female out again tonight. The male had been spending a lot of his time around her cage so I figured they'd do OK together.

Like last time, they were fine for a few minutes. Swam around together, flared their fins at each other and that was mostly it. She went into one of the pots, he tried to follow but changed his mind. Then they started bickering again. The male pushed back this time, but I can't really tell if what they're doing is normal behavior, courting, or just beating on each other that needs to be stopped; kribs are the first remotely aggressive cichlid that I've kept more than one per tank, so...

Anyhow, I grabbed a short video, which I put on youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrdEFB2XAFI

They spent a solid 3-5 minutes, maybe longer, going after each other like that with short breaks. He's now back up in the top 1/3 of the tank and she's ignoring him. He's not really faded at all, but both of them are (as one might expect) breathing hard.

So what do you think: Leave her in or pull her again?
 
Thought I'd post one more update on the off chance that I'm not talking to myself in here. :uhoh:

I put the female back in her net breeder on the morning of the 7th. She'd pushed the male up into the corner by the filter tubes again and was tormenting him.

I let her out again tonight; I was going to leave her for another 24-48hrs, but she looked really distressed and she'd been refusing most of her food (anything but tubifex) for the past few days. She'd push it all over the bottom of her box but not eat any of it. The male had spent most of the past two days hanging out on the other side of her net anyhow, so I decided to chance it.

They courted for about 15 minutes and apparently spawned while I was out of the room. My girlfriend saw the female go into one of the terra cotta caves and come out about 30 seconds later, after which the male went in and came out. I tried to look in there with the help of a flashlight and there look to be eggs scattered on the floor of the cave, but it's hard for me to tell because of their size and the angle. Given that my clown plec was absolutely hell bent on getting in that cave (he's since been removed) and they're keeping all of the other fish pretty much away from it, I don't think there's much room for doubt.

I'm just glad that she doesn't seem so interested in bashing his brains in anymore, and that she hasn't killed anything else in the tank (yet). :rolleyes:
 
What did I tell you with my first post here ;) haha. Congratz!!!
 
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