Blue Jaw Trigger & Blue Tang

DerekG4

New member
I recently just got a Blue Jaw Trigger for my reef tank to have something a little different. I’ve read they’re perfectly safe with corals, small chance they may eat small fish and a fair chance he’ll eat inverts. Turns out mine is nearly perfect. Doesn’t eat any inverts (my cleaner shrimp was cleaning him) and doesn’t bother my smaller fish. However I noticed he hides quite a lot. I know this is normal for a new fish but I’ve had him for roughly a month or so. I’ve noticed that my blue tang absolutely hates him and will always chase him soon as he sees him out of his cave, but it’s only my blue tang. At first my yellow tang chased him a little bit at first but settled down after a few days, my sailfin occasionally chased him and once sliced his fin, but they seem mostly fine, but my blue tang seems to always chase him and never lets him out. He’s otherwise a great eater and not too shy.

Will the tang eventually calm down or will this keep on happening so long as I have either one? I didn’t think this would happen at all, I figured my blue tang would only be aggressive towards other tangs. It has never fought anything besides a Kole tang I used to have and it was an occasional thing, not something frequent like the blue jaw.

The tank is a 150g, 3 years old, inhabited by a yellow tang, sailfin tang, purple firefish, PJ cardinal, banngai cardinal, ocellaris clown, Wyoming white percula, Lubbock wrasse, kamohara blenny, a cleaner shrimp, “purple” and yellow wrasse, the blue tang, and the blue jaw Trigger. I wanted to catch the blue tang and put it in a small mesh container I have until the blue jaw starts feeling comfortable, but soon as it sees the net, it bolts to the rock. The blue tang is also smaller than the Trigger, the tang is about 3.5” where as the Trigger is a little over 4”
 
a yellow, sailfin, regal , bluethorat in a 150 plus other fish ... sounds like a terrritorial dispute to me. Possibly the tang will calm down but may have to rearange your rock to break up territory or remove the agressor.
 
The tang should settle down in time. My blue tang gave my blue throat trigger guff for a while too but now they're totally fine together just took time. But like nikon said, if you move the rocks around that may speed up the acceptance process as the tang will be too busy establishing a new territory.
 
I’ll try moving around a few rocks. It’s just very strange to me because they’ve never been aggressive towards anything but themselves occasionally. I didn’t think they’d be aggressive towards something quite different from their species, let alone something a little bigger than it.

I just hope it doesn’t take too long for them to settle down, I really like that blue jaw.
 
the tangs will be aggressive with anything they see as a threat to their territory. The tank isnt getting any bigger but they are and so are their attitudes. It is quite common
 
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