Aggressive males fighting

DrivingMissFishy

The males have been pretty harmonious until recently. They have the odd scuffle but its usually nothing too bad. Last week I came home to find my Placidochromis phenocilus beaten badly with multiple wounds and shredded fins. Luckily I was able to net him into a hospital floater (I don't have a hospital tank set up yet). He healed well thankfully! But I found out who the culprit was, a male Pundamilia nyereri who was trying to attack him through the plastic!! This lasted a day then he gave up. I've just done my weekly water change and the pundamilia has started attacking him through the plastic again, even more viciously to the point where u can hear him banging into the side of the tank from another room!! I know this is stressful to the phenocilus and it seems to enrage the pundamilia even more that his victim isn't fleeing but holding ground! My question is will they possibly get over this? I'm moving them to a new tank soon and was thinking I could put the less dominant fish in for a day or two before adding the dominant ones. The pundamilia is not king of the tank I don't think, he is scared of the M. Msobo male who will every so often come and chase him away from his victim. I'm not sure if maybe the phenocilus is just too placid to live with my other fish, he is stunning and I don't want him to keep getting hurt or end up dead! Thoughts?
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Tazman

The other fish you have are way too aggressive for the very calm phenocilus, either it or the others have to go. Sorry to be harsh but we cannot change their behavior, we can limit the aggression but in this case it will only continue.

phenocilus can pretty much go with anything on the less aggressive side, I had mine mixed with yellows labs, rusty and a Frontosa, no one even batted an eyelid at each other, all very peaceful apart from when the rusty was in breeding mode and even then no aggression as you describe.

DrivingMissFishy

So I got home from work just in time to see the pundamilia fighting with the c. Azeureus, lip locking and biting eachother. There's also an Acei with torn fins and some body wounds. This guy hates blue fish!! It seems strange seeing as there's another male pundamilia in the same tank, and astatotilapia latisifiata which are more similar in colour. The mean guy is now in a floater and I'm gonna take him to the lfs asap. Now I finally understand all the things I've read about 'potential aggression' how a fish could just kill a whole tank if it feels like it! Unbelieveable
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DrivingMissFishy

So now this morning I had some time to observe the fish again and I noticed that 2 of the pundamilia females are now holding. It looks like his crazy aggression is his 'spawning mode'
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Shewbert

He will more than likely be protecting the place he chose to mate in,maybe a cave,,log etc, take this out for a couple of days then replace it in a new position in the tank , they can be very fiesty fish in spawning mode.
Taking out the feature takes away his chosen place,,Hence he has nothing to protect
but during his next spawning period he will start all over again so repeat this if he does.
sometimes doing this can change the pecking order in the tank, that is if another fish gets the cave before him this can have a calming effect.
Good luck
Ray