Phyllonemus typus Fighting

[Phyllonemus]

Hello all,
I've never seen my Phyllonemus typus fighting before, but for three days or so now my two males are fighting in the evening with the lights still on, without hurting eachother.
They are sort of " rolling " around eachother, and holding each other to the fat fin 10cm above the substrate.

There are al lot of caves in the tank and I think it's about territorial issues, could that be ?

The 2 females are more absent during feeding !

[Richard B]

Sidguppy posted a superb selection of his ones fighting fiercely & they have (most probably) enough territory. Sid hypothesized that the fighting was over spawning rights which seems to make sense to me presuming territory is not an issue. Perhaps these diminuative cats need much larger territories than we realise? (in respect of actual floorprint as opposed to the number of caves etc)

[sidguppy]

Phyllonemus typus can and do fight quite a bit for severtal reasons

in my case it were the females fighting over dominance; I have only 1 male and he's bigger and darker, so that was easy to spot.

I've seen similar fights between adolescent individuals of the same sex and even between male and female.

it's not just territoriumsize, cause I have had small 1 meter tanks with 3 pairs breeding side by side and the fight I photographed was in a 315G tank with plenty more caves than catfishes.....

check my avatar! ;)

[Phyllonemus]

The Males are still fighting now and then, but I've seen now that one of the two females is breeding