"in 5/08 I bought 10 P. long pelvic fry from a reputable home dealer. I now have mostly males, maybe 3 females. The one male is dominant and the others rarely show their beautiful colors or he gets them into a "lip lock" fight. The girls run and hide from all the male attention. They are in a 55 gallon with plenty of rocks and about 10 other assorted cichlids.
Can they exist like this?? any suggestions?? "
yes
Malawi cichlids can be a management problem...
when keeping almost any type of cichlid it is best to have more than 1 tank...
because of aggression individuals eventually need to moved around...
either putting victims in hospital
or putting bullys in jail...
the same behavior that makes them fascinating
can be extremely frustrating if they actually start damaging each other...
in general
I would have said that 20 Malawi cichlids
in a 55 gallon tank
should have been adequate to break up the aggression among many individuals....
but
all cichlids are unpredictable with any certainty...
a few things you could do are:
remove the most aggressive (best) male,
remove all the males except one, leave all the females,
turn the temperature down to 71 degrees F...
they will still color, they will still breed, but they are less likely to fight when the temperature is low...
the other thing you could do is simply bail on that species..
and try keeping any other type of cichlid... or any other type of fish for that matter...
all the Malawi cichlids
in what I call 'the striped Zebra group" (any of the BB Zebras)
are more aggressive than most other Malawi cichlids