Male not letting female eat

Question
QUESTION: Hi,
We are having trouble with our sugar gliders at feeding time (all night). We have one neutered male and one female. It seems that our male SG will try to eat ALL the food and if our female tries to eat something he runs after her and bites at her tail.
This is what we've tried: We put out two plates for them, so they each have their own food. We tried putting the plates at different levels (we noticed she likes to eat up high, while he likes to eat down at the bottom of the cage).

History: We had the male sugar glider for 1 year before getting a female. She was adopted from a nice home with multiple sugar gliders. They got along after a few days and are still able to play nicely together. We always put them back in the same cage in the morning so they can sleep all day together.
Also, when we feed them by hand (mealworms etc) the male even sometimes shares his food!
So my question is, what is wrong when they are fed from a plate? Why won't he share? How can we get the gliders to exist peacefully in one cage all night long without her starving!?  Thank you in advance for any and all help you could give us!

ANSWER: Dear Ben:

So far, it sounds like you have been doing the right things.  A couple of questions.  How long has he been neutered?  How old are they?  When did you acquire the female?  How long were they together when the behavior started?  How long were they together before you started separating them?  If you wait a couple of hours to put in the food, does he still chase her around and bite at her tail or is it only in relation to food?

It will help me to have a little bit more information.

Laurie

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Here are the answers to the questions you asked:
He has been neutered for about one and a half years-He's probably around 2 1/2 yrs old.
We got the female about a year ago. She is also about the same age.
The gliders were initially in different cages and we did the thing where you switch the sleeping pouch etc until they got used to each other. After about a week or two we put them together. The food aggression started soon after--maybe one or two days they were able to eat together.
If we wait to put food in, they are fine and will play nicely for hours. It is only when the food arrives that he starts to get upset. He usually eats his favorite thing on his plate (usually the worms) and then will go eat hers.

I hope that helps!  We really appreciate it!  

Answer
Okay.  The first thing I would try next is not feed him his mealworms in his dish.  Feed the mealworms separately before feeding time.  You wrote he'll share when he's in his pouch.  Hand feed the mealworms, so you can monitor who gets what, then put the rest of the food down.  

Hopefully, this will do two things:  (1) He will not be quite so hungry, (2) There will be no mealworms to be aggressive over.  

The next thing I would do is put a high-quality pellet, like Zookeeper's secret in the cage during the day to help curb his need to protect his food and see if this helps.  Perhaps if there is some sort of food 24-7, he'll not feel the need to be aggressive at mealtimes.  

Let me know how this works.