When fish don't read their profiles

I've had a pussycat Red Empress male (supposed to be obnoxious) and a lovely yellow jake male (also supposed to be aggressive), so I'm always interested in/puzzled by fish that seem to defy the "common knowledge" about them. I have a case in point right now. I have two fully colored up, mature ruby red peacock males sharing a 40 breeder with an original 6 females that has now grown to too many fish to count as the freaking babies keep living. So not only are the two males friends (they actually hang out together) they don't appear to be actively searching and destroying babies.

And, speaking of not reading your profiles, the babies are surviving in this small tank with EIGHT petricola!

I watch this tank every morning and see fish coming from everywhere and I don't know what to make of it. Now it is pretty heavily planted, so there are lots of sight breaks. Clearly I'm going to have to pull something sometime soon (one of the babies is growing into a male, I think) but with everyone getting along I'm afraid to upset the balance.

So who has a tank that isn't "supposed" to work??

I have an oscar that tries to play with a bristle nose! And a tank with sa ca aa cichlids and theyre all buddies too!

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Red empress have always been mellow for me in Malawi tanks, same with yellow jakes for the most part. But I always found aggression to be relative to other tankmates, tank size, individual fish, etc, anyway.

I've kept fronts with small fish no problem, including keeping an extra 10 inch plus male Kapampa in a tank that included congo tetras. No hint that he even paid any attention to them, whether predatory or otherwise. Had a Burundi a few years ago that would not tolerate any other frontosa in his tank, nor any colored up male fish of any species, but I could put very small Malawi fry in his tank (under an inch) and he wouldn't bother them one bit.

Not my tank, but one of the most surprising to me at the time was a discus tank with an adult green terror (gold saum) in it and no hint of dominance by the gt and no hint of stress by the discus (and discus do not hide it when they're stressed).

...Once upon a time had a tank with a male betta and a jewel fish among the inhabitants where the betta ended up terrorizing the jewel fish... and I've seen some jewel fish take apart much larger fish at times.

I used to have an Albino Angelfish that would beat the snot out of any fish in the tank with it. He eventually wound up in a tank with an Oscar and a Jack Dempsey. . where he was top dog, err, fish.

One of my 29 gallon tanks is a good example of this. I have a spawning pair of Julidochromis that have staked out the rock pile on one end of the tank and the rest of the tank is inhabited by an unruly colony of L. Multifasciatus. Supposedly, the Julies should be snacking on multi fry. However, the Julies never leave the rock pile. If they do the adult Multis immediately "escort" them back. In addition to this, there are multi fry living in a shell right up against the rocks and they also swim into the rock pile without notice from the Julie pair. I think my fish didn't get the memo.