Hi,

I have a pretty peaceful community 40gal freshwater tank. I bought a bright red/orange double swordtail, and it got ick.I seperated it and treated it sucessfully. When I tried to put it back into the main tank, it was met with incredible aggression from the other tankmates. It was being ganged up on and attacked so badly I pulled it back out and put it back into the hospital tank. I've been puzzling over what to do.

Today I decided to follow the advice of a gal at the lfs., and I purchased one additional swordtail to introduce into the tank at the same time as I tried to reintroduce the double sword again (I also bought a pretty gold nugget pleco at the same time). So I had 3 fish to put in the tank at once. Two being male swords. I also fed the tank as I was releasing the 3 new fish.

At first I thought it had worked, but when the feeding stopped, some aggression re-emerged. The female swordtail began violently attacking the male double sword again. She grabs the dorsal fin and violently shakes/tears it back and forth. I've looked online,but can't find info on this behavior. Anyone else know what the problem is? I don't know how long to give it to see if it'll resolve itself, or if I need to pull the male again? At least it's one-on-one this time between the two of them, whereas last time everyone bullied the poor thing and it wasn't able to defend itself.

TIA
Shalori

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