Fight Club (Neolamprologus brevis)

[Andreas Werth]

Hi,
I´m not exactly sure whether there is a picture per thread limit, I´ll try with five shots for the beginning.

I noticed the sticky thread with Shell Dwelling Cichlids links, so maybe someone will find the following story of interest.

Some weeks ago I was working at home late and left the tank bulbs on. At some point I noticed some action in my 60l Dwarf Shell Dwellers tank.
Sand clouds whirled up, so I left my chair. Two females have started to fight...
So I grabbed my camera and started to shoot. They didn´t seem to bother about the flash storm, because they have been concentrating on each other absolutely.
Side note : both males completely kept their noses out. The bigger one simply stayed inside the snail shell for more than 20 minutes.











Here you can find a small slide show with all the photos I have taken from the show...

[Repz]

they are just some excellent photos
thanks for sharing with us.
goto love a good cat fight!

[Ah_ZhaN]

Hi andreas,

Nice brevis there, are they fighting over a same girl which is inside the shell ?

[Andreas Werth]

Hi,
thank you for your comments.

No, it´s the females who are fighting :-)
The males didn´t fight at all!
(and one of them is inside the snail shell, like you correctly spotted, he didn´t came out for the whole fight, you can see the tip of his fin in #2 and #5)

[trident]

andreas,
I am a shellies fight fan!
very good series, love the war paint on their face.
I got some neolamprologus brevis sunspot in my tank, but they are not that agressive,
I find the occelatus more of a fighter!

[Andreas Werth]

Hi Richard,

you are welcome :-)

I got some neolamprologus brevis sunspot in my tank, but they are not that agressive, I find the occelatus more of a fighter!

Mine aren´t either - most of the time.
The two pairs are living close together in 60l. No one was harmed seriously so far.

Could you show me a photo of one of your sunspots?

[luenny]

Hi Andreas,
Those are some seriously nice photos. Good action series.

By the way, I went to your website and I love the photos there. Especially the one where the shrimp is fanning for food. Looks like I've found another photography sifu (master) that I can learn from.

[bossteck]

Very nice photos! Glad you were working late, else we wouldn't be able to see those shots.

[celticfish]

Andreas,
Nice series of photos of the incident!
I especially like the freezing of the sand particles.
And the narrative too.

[RHX]

That's a very nice show. Love the shots!

[doppelbanddwarf]

Stunning photos and beautiful fishes. Simply breathtaking.

[Andreas Werth]

Hi,
thank you very much for all the kind comments.
I consider myself lucky to run into these scenes.

Some words about my equipment. I used three flashes for this setup. That helped avoiding harsh shadows on the ground and also provided enough light to illuminate the scene nicely, catch the colours of the fishes as good as possible. Two flashguns shot from above, one on the left, one on the right, pointing down at an angle. The third one was in my left hand shooting from the front.
So, not using the built-in flash of the camera and being able to control the other flashes wireless is a main key to get better photos of your fishes.

[Freshman]

Wow!! Thanks for sharing!