Two male Anthias?

[Pineapple House]

Recently, after a year of waiting and researching, a I finally purchased 11 Bartlett's Anthias for my aquarium alittle over three weeks ago (1 large male and 10 females). My tank was pretty much designed just for these fish, and these fish are the only fish in the tank (besides a mandarin). All eleven of them eat pellets, flake foods, Cyclop eeze, brine, and mysids like pigs. They're also fed very small amounts 7x daily. Now here's the problem. I've been noticing that one of the largest females was often being harrassed by the male anthias. This female was roughly the same size as the male. I've been slowely watching this female turn into a male. Now, I currently have two male anthias. I'm curious if it's possible to have two males with 9 other females. The tank is 5'x2'x2' and has extremely strong water motion within the tank (5000gph within the tank). If these two males cannot co-exist, should I remove them?

Thanks,
Graham

[fish100]

Bump for your good question.

I'm not sure, I think it is possible (likely) so long as they are all eating. Provided your not going to be overstocking, you could try a few more females. Maybe there would be two subgtroups then, I don't know. Doing that you might end up with three males as another matures or is tired of their male.

Again providing the tank wont be overcrowded, you could try a small school of another anthias type which could cause some distraction between male and females of the first species. Other midwater tank planktivores might help to serve as diffusion against agression too. :)

"Reef Fishes, Volume 1," by Scott W. Michael covers many Anthias, Pseudoanthias, et cetera, and discusses these with some detail there.