# Weeding out the males



## punman (Oct 24, 2003)

I plan on going with tropheus in the next two or three weeks so I keep posting my questions.
I keep hearing, if buying fry, to get a lot and then weed out the extra males.
So as an example, if you start out with 30 and have 15 males, what do you do with 10 or 12 males you no longer want? Who else would want all males? I can't see a pet store buying them. Maybe taking them for free.
What do you people do with these "culled" fish?


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## lloyd (Aug 24, 2005)

this assumption might be necessary, for some of the larger, more aggressive variants (eg. sp. annectens, sp. mpimbwe), but i do not think it to be an anticipated experience for all tropheus.


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## BrownBullhead (May 15, 2005)

*punman*: You will find that "free" fish will move quickly. There will be more than a handful of "mixed cichlid" keepers who would take free males. Using your numbers, you assume 15 M, 15 F, then culling to end up 3 M + 15 F? Why do you want such a low number of males? I've found 1 M : 2 F ratio works well for me, now and in the past. So how about 7 M + 15 F? More than a few males to keep each other occupied and leave the girls be.


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## flashg (Oct 5, 2007)

If you get a good group of 10-15 chances are you should be ok... You might get one or two males that just won't accept their place and becomed crowned or dead, but a 1:2 is good (in a group of 10-15) 1:3 would be better though. A lot of the males will accept their sub-domain place and act like females for the most part.


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## punman (Oct 24, 2003)

Can a bunch of males be kept in their own tank without females?


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## BrownBullhead (May 15, 2005)

*punman*: No. An acquaintance of mine took 11 males from me that I unwittingly acquired from someone else; let's just say neither of us had a positive experience.


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## flashg (Oct 5, 2007)

I've seen a group of three male zongwe do ok together without any females, but my buddy put them in his malawi tank (extra males from his colony)... Needless to say the malawi's suffered greatly and he lost a lot of his peacocks.

I would not recommend it, unless you have no other choice.


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