Will a male and a female discus fight each other?

[jeff12]

Will a male and female discus fight each other? Like lock lips, peck, and chase each other? Or does sex not matter when talking about aggression. There is only 2 of them of the same kind in the tank.

[John_Nicholson]

All animals fight. It is completely normal. Their sex has little to do with it.

-john

[Filip]

Me and my wife, we fight each other at least 3 times a week .Well , we maybe not lock lips , chase and peck each other but it still counts . So why shouldn't they :) .

BTW How do you know they are male +female ?
Determining sex on discus without them having wrigglers is very difficult and unexact task .

[Neptune]

Me and my wife, we fight each other at least 3 times a week .Well , we maybe not lock lips , chase and peck each other but it still counts . So why shouldn't they :) .


Filip...you are missing the best part!:evilgrin:

[DISCUS STU]

This may be redundant but they fight all the time. Just a personal observation not backed up by ANY study I've ever seen, but females may be even more aggressive than males. Especially when they're in breeding mode.

Here's a picture of my favorite Psycho Mom breeder after she jumped out of the tank, again, after trying to kick my butt because I got too close to her and the kids. I already had a divider in the tank to separate her from the male, who's butt (ya I know Discus don't have butts) she was kicking out of jealousy when they were nursing the fry.

Not to worry. She was fine after I put her back into the tank.

105360

[Kyla]

my males and females occasionally give a little chase, but its pretty tame. mostly they just flirt.

my dominant females bicker constantly, whenever they pass eachother they ram each other, chase eachother, bite and slap... they try to stop eachother from getting food. they r total jerks. they leave little marks on eachother's flanks and split fins occasionally but i just increase water changes and they heal up fine. all the girls seem to handle the aggression oK and no one gets bullied so badly that i am concerned for their health.

the males i have now rarely fight. they have a well established rank and they respect each other's space. they take turns eating and trade places in the tank in an orderly fashion. they dance together with the flirting females. in the past i had lots of problems with two very aggressive males who hurt eachother and the other males in the tank. they split eachothers fins deep and ripped off spines and raked their faces and mouths up so bad i had to water change 2x a day to prevent infection. they were always covered in battle wounds. it was a difficult decision but i rehomed both of them and now everyone is quite happy.

[Ryan]

I've seen male/female pairs fight and squabble in breeding tanks. It's more common with other cichlids than discus, but it happens with discus too.

In mixed setups it's almost always males fighting males and females fighting females. When I see discus ready to spawn here, a good indicator of determining the sex of all the discus is watching which ones are attacked by the male and which are attacked by the female. It's not 100% but it's pretty close. My guess is that the instinct is to drive off competition to ensure they are the one who gets to mate.

[PAR23]

When I see discus ready to spawn here, a good indicator of determining the sex of all the discus is watching which ones are attacked by the male and which are attacked by the female. It's not 100% but it's pretty close. My guess is that the instinct is to drive off competition to ensure they are the one who gets to mate.

This has also been my experience. The females would fight with each other and the males would do the same but rarely will the opposite sex attack one another. At first I found this behavior to be very interesting but now that I know the sex of the fish, it made more sense.