Discus fighting

[Roberth]

I am new to discus and I understand with cichlids there will be some bullying but tonight I notice bite marks on both sides of my nicest one. I have three adults 5”-6” and 5 juvies 2.5”-3”in a 75 gal tank.
I’m not sure if they are male or female. The three fight each other and is more than just chasing each other around the tank they go nose to nose biting.
Any advice as to what I should do.

[peewee1]

I have 2 who were much like betta. Fighting daily for almost a year. I was going to get rid of the aggressor. Then one day the two of them decided to pair up for spawning. It's pretty hard to tell what those fish are up to, or why. The two do not fight any more and do now chase away the other four from what they have decided is their side of the tank. All of my fish are in the 6 inches size except for one little 4 inches Red Heckel. He does battle with any and all of the 5 others who are twice his size.

[AquaticNerd]

The "nose to nose fighting" you are seeing is typically called lip-locking. It's a mechanism that many cichlids use to establish dominance and pecking order. There's really no escaping it completely unless you just get lucky and get a group that is completely docile.

My group of six adults did this for about a month before things started settling down. They still get the occasional scratch or whatever from other discus, but I've never had an issue with it healing. Ideally you want to provide some form of "visual break" for them, whether that be through large pieces of wood, rocks, or plants. Another option is the introduction of dither fish, which normally just spreads out aggression because the many smaller dither fish distract the bigger ones. If you go the dither fish route (I always had plans for my tank to have cardinal tetras as dither fish), make sure you follow proper QT methods.