Fish Fight In The Parking Lot!!!

The story of my life is I'm always trying to do the right thing, and it backfires on me.  Here's the latest incident.  I was browsing Craigslist (no, not that section.)  I was looking at the free section.  I saw an ad giving away a pair of mated angelfish.  I looked at the included photo, and saw they were pretty good size.  It seems they had outgrown their tank, and needed to be rehomed.

I thought, "perfect!"  Since I had two angelfish pass away a few months ago I could use two angelfish to restock the tank.  Long story short, I brought them home.

As you can probably guess, that's when the trouble began.  The big male (the marble colored one) and the male that was already in my tank decided to have a fish fight.

I mean, they really went at it.  I'd never seen anything like it.  They would actually bite each other's lips and hold on.  Then there was posturing and maneuvering.  Despite my attempts to break up the fight they went at it for a couple hours until they were both worn out.

Since it was near the beginning of the month I decided to so something I had heard about.  Generally fish like their own territory, so if I were to rearrange the tank with natural breaks in it, I believed they would leave each other alone.

So I gave the tank a great scrubbing, and performed my first of the month cleaning/water change.  Next, I moved my rocks and plants around to create natural barriers.  It ended up looking like this.

It seems to have worked.  They are somewhat passive aggressive and engaged in what I would call a "fin measuring" contest.  But at least they aren't attacking each other.  The two males have claimed their own parts of the tank.  However, the loaches have no idea what's going on.  But in all honesty, they don't care.  Neither do the giant danios.

The new fish (the male and female pair) hang out together.

While the three fish (one male and two females) I originally had hang out together.

But every now and then the two males give each other dirty glances.

So my plan has somewhat worked out.  It's strange because I never had any problems with angelfish before this.  They had always gotten along.  But now that I think about it, they tended to be very young when I brought them home.  Hopefully after a week they'll figure out some sort of rhythm to the fish tank.