Quarantine situation

[Cullymoto]

Hello all, have a bit of an issue developing on my hands.
I recently acquired 4 new discus from a breeder, no issues there.
The new fish are in a 30 gal Quarantine that will also serve as thier grow out, thing is...
my little golden lollipop is asserting its dominance, to the point where it could be upsetting the other 3 fish in the tank.
Debating on weather or not I should set up a tank devider, leave them be for now (i got them less than 48 hours ago), or set up a 10 gal for either all 4 or just the aggressive fish.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

[Cullymoto]

bump

[Keith Perkins]

You could try adding a clump of artificial plants in a corner of the tank if it's really so bad you feel like you have to do something, just to give the meekest somewhere to find cover when the aggression is at its worst.

[Cullymoto]

thinking about placing a devider into the tank, although the thought of some dithers just occured to me. Would a group of 6 bloodfin, or cardinals etc make the situation better? there is plenty of room in the quarantine for such a group.

[Poco]

4 fish is not a good number to have! discus is a schooling fish and do well in numbers +6. Having a bigger group divides the aggression so not one fish gets it all the time.

How big/old are they?

Try as Keith has suggested and see if it helps.

[Cullymoto]

I know that the numbers are wrong, thats why there are 4 of them in QT, they will be added to the 4 I have in my community tank... the comm tank holds a 2 year old with some others that are a bit younger. I believe I got them a bit stunted (from LFS).
The new fish are 2.5 -3.5" so the oldest would be just over 2 months, these I picked up from a breeder. I intend to give them a grow out period only long enough that they are similar in size to the group in the community tank.
That said, I am looking at a 2-4 month duration of having the QT/ grow out tank running. I need to be able to mitigate the aggression shown by the lollipop for this time frame.
I do have a devider system that I could modify to fit this tank, but i do think that seperating 1 fish to be by itself would be detrimental to the 1 fish... looking for some other alternative.
Thank you however, for your opinion.

[Kal-El]

48 hours is not a lot of time for things to settle in. I wait a week and things will settle in once the pecking order is establish. This is normal Discus behavior the way I look at it. Unless you see the Alpha one just continually kicking the butt off the other fish to the point of them not eating or darkening then at this point I will put a divider in the tank.

[a volar]

I will give them more time and maybe add a plant as suggested...