coral hogfish - everyone attacked it

clearwaterblue

New member
Two days ago I picked up a juvenile coral hogfish and added it to my 46 gallon. My current livestock are a maroon clown (3"), a large starry blenny, a sunrise dottyback, and a coral banded shrimp.

As soon as I put the hogfish in, ALL the fish started chasing and attacking him - even the blenny who has never bothered anything. The shrimp was even reaching out at him with his pinchers as he passed by.

He made it to a rock and hid so I assumed he would be fine by tomorrow.... well I haven't seen him since. At this point I'm pretty sure he's dead.

I'm just curious about this behavior - is it because the hogfish is a more aggressive fish and they are trying to get rid of him while he's small? Is there some incompatibility issue going on? Just curious - hate to see fish die like that and would like to avoid this happening again.
 
I think its generally what happens with any new additions as most fish/inverts are territorial, best thing you can do to ease the transition is use an aclimation box and put it inside the tank for a few days to a week, if no aggression is noticed then everything should be good for releasing into your display tank, if aggression exists after a week then it's probably a good idea to return to the store or trade for something else. Hope your new fish comes out from hiding.
 
What is the current set up? FOWLR?

Maroons are notoriously aggressive and dottybacks can be bullies as well....Maybe they were standing their ground no pun intended.

I love the hogs they are always so pretty but there are very few that are reef safe so that doesn't work for me....
 
It's not a FOWLR but I only have a few softies and he was so small that I wasn't worried for the time being.

I moved my rock around until I found him - dead. :mad: He was certainly attacked as he had some chunks missing and part of his tail was gone.

I'll have to look into an acclimation box I suppose.

I went ahead and reworked my aqua-scape since I had to move all the rocks around and it looks much better, so I guess that's the silver lining :fun4:
 
I always add new fish to the tank just before lights out. That way the new fish can find a temporary home for the night, and the other fish can get used to the new fish when they wake up in the morning.
 
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