Restoring the peace!!!w/ danios???

[Xxzsdrklakdfj]

hey, i have a pair of leleupi housed in a 45 gal. by themselves, for awhile now the pair bond has been perfect. Sure the would "argue" and have the ocasional "domestic dispute" but for the most part both male and female got along great w/ eachother, even gave me 3 batches of fry!!!first time i removed the fry when they got decent size, and the second time the fry were about a quater an in when one day i woke up and noticed a good 20 or so brand new fry at the entrance of the fm's cave. Seeing as how neither the male, female or older fry really cared too much that these new fry were in the picture i decided to just leave them in there a bit longer. Well everything went about normal for a good 2-3 weeks then all #@# broke loose for some reason over night!!!went to bed all was good, woke up and the fm was at the VERY upper most portion of the tank(and this is a 23in tall tank here) w/ torn fins and the male kept coming up after her i guess just to make sure she didn't even think about coming back down. Well i imediatly moved both the male and the female, each to different tanks for a week and let the fry grow a little more before i moved them to their own tank and added the parents back together into their own tank, this time i added TONS of caves and large shells, and a few places that only the female could get into, ( i even had to break my natural look for a clay pot right in the center w/ a hole small enough that only the female could get in) So the female still stays at the bottom but stays mostly near the places only she can get to, and when the male see's here he basically flips out untill she enters one of the caves that he can't follow here into. SO now to my question, would adding maybe a few zebra danio's that would for the most part stay in the upper portion of the tank bring peace back to my pair and maybe evenget the leleupi back on the path of givin me some more fry??? I was just hoping that the danios would kinda distract the male a little bit and possibly even kinda give the male and female a "common enemy" to bring their pair bond back together??? Plus i figured the way the danio's move so quickly non-stop kinda the leleupi really wouldn't even be able to bother them TOO much. Well does this sound like a good idea? or should i just let the leleupi settle this themselves and just kinda keep my eyes on things to make sure it doesn't get out of control???

Thanks in advance for the advice,
-matt
BTW
male is allmost 3in and the fm is about 2.5

[merlyn2221]

Of course, you can try the danios, but there is no real guarantee that they will work. My concern would be more or less about why he is freaking out. I think it may have to do with the fact that there were some other males in the tank and so he became "hyperdominant" because of this. I have heard some people who have these fish mention that this can happen. I would suggest that if you put the "pair" back together, add several more females to the group at the same time. She won't take the brunt of all the chasing/picking. Even if he still spawns only with her, there will be other females to take some of his abuse away from her.

I had to add three female brichardis to my pair because he beat up the one all the time. Since then the picking has been equal and no one really suffers.

Hope whatever you do it works out well for you since these are very nice looking fish.