Lyretail Anthias and Purple Queen Anthias

[Dj.dale]

Can you put these to in a tank together ? I have one male Lyretail and 3 females and want to put 4 purple queen in can I ?

 

[jraker]

how big of a tank

 

[twon8]

I imagine the lyretails will bully the purple queens, which are hard enough to get to eat as it is

 

[MIKE NY]

I had them together for over three years. My male Lyretail mostly ignored the Purple Queens, but my male Purple Queen actually defended himself when the Lyretail would try to chase him. IMO the two problems to over come are a large enough tank so there is plenty of room for the Purples to shoal away from the Lyretails and more importantly getting enough food to them multiple times a day because the Lyretails are the more aggressive eaters. I used a separate acclimation tank for the Purples so they were all healthy and eating well before they were added to the DT. I also had other peaceful Anthias in my DT at that time like Dispars and Ignitus. They would actually all shoal together away from the Lyretails.

 

[snorvich]

I had them together for over three years. My male Lyretail mostly ignored the Purple Queens, but my male Purple Queen actually defended himself when the Lyretail would try to chase him. IMO the two problems to over come are a large enough tank so there is plenty of room for the Purples to shoal away from the Lyretails and more importantly getting enough food to them multiple times a day because the Lyretails are the more aggressive eaters. I used a separate acclimation tank for the Purples so they were all healthy and eating well before they were added to the DT. I also had other peaceful Anthias in my DT at that time like Dispars and Ignitus. They would actually all shoal together away from the Lyretails.

Excellent advice with emphasis on large (long) tank. Purple Queens rarely survive without a lot of effort getting them to eat. That acclimation works better in a tank to themselves.

 

[ca1ore]

Yep, really hard to get to eat enough, and anything that gets in the way just makes the task tougher. Where I've had some limited success keeping the problematic feeder anthias is with tanks where the other fish were calm and measured eaters.