Overstocking damsels to disperse aggression?

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sniceley

New member
I have a client who wants a tank with tons of movement and color but is on a tight budget. I was thinking of stocking one of the tanks with loads of damsels. It is a 400 gallon system, actually two semicircles butted against one another to look like a cylinder. About 250 lbs of rock in each with a robust growth of large leathers and montipora with some other lps and softies mixed in. When I set up African cichlid aquariums for clients in overstock and over filter them because doing so disperses individual aggression issues. Basically the aggressor loses the target in the crowd. If I were to add let's say 50 damsels on one side of the tank (yellow tail, azure, blue fin, Talbot's, lemon) would this work?

I had a 180 in college with 300 damsels of all kinds. Worked at a shop and got everything at cost so I bought three boxes of phillipine assorted damsels to try and mimic a reef picture I saw. No real problems for 6 months until I got tired of them and wanted to remove them. Caught about 20 until they knew what a net meant. Ended up adding a medium panther grouper to the tank and he cleaned it out for me in about 6 weeks at which time I had a much larger panther grouper.
 
I think if they are all got when smaller and all added together, (at least in each tank) you stand a reasonable chance of success. Some will die from time to time but the more there are the better chance of survival. When the damsels get mature and bigger is when the problems will arise. You should try and talk the client into some angels. When you think of a reef the first two fish that come to mind are angels and tangs. In the short term your on to something, in the long term you will have some serious little ***** fish
 
I have tried to talk them into other fish. Recently put about 50 fish divided up over the 3 systems. Tangs, bicolor foxface, fairy wrasses, lyretail anthias, various gobies, pj cardinals, azure and talbots damsels and a school of green chromis.

Of all of them they were most happy with the damsels, chromis, and cardinals. They are the type of clients that want lots of smaller fish with lots of action. Biggest problem is that they share a building with another client who has a 6000 gallon artificial reef with large schools of tangs, butterflies, and hundreds of clowns and damsels. He sees the quarantine tank with 300 damsels in it and says thats what I want my tank to look like. I have explained numerous times why that is not typical, but at this point I am going with the customer is always right.

Thinking of big schools of firefish as well, just kind of pricey on the lists lately. I figure I will do schools of firefish and chromis on one side of the 400 and tons of assorted damsels on the other side.

The other issue with the angels is that there is a lot of lps (hammers and torches mostly) in both sides of the 400. If one decided to start eating it that would be an issue. It is one of the only things that survived the tank crash that caused them to hire me in the first place.
 
I had 8 blue devils in my tank. Now have one. I think they pick each other off over time. I know you are talking a lot more in number, but I suspect the result may be the same in the end.
 
School is not the correct word, but I could put a large group into the tank and they should do well.

In my experience with groups of aggressive fish (african cichlids) there is a magic density. Essentially when attacking a tankmates you can lose him in the crowd then aggression is dispersed enough so that no one fish gets picked on to the point of exhaustion. If I put 10 in a 100 gallon tank we would eventually the end up with 1, put 50 and you end up with 100 or more because they stay happy to the point of breeding. Of course you have to maintain water quality and since that is my responsibility I can handle that. I will definitely try this and report my results over time.
 
sniceley said:
In my experience with groups of aggressive fish (african cichlids) there is a magic density.
Click to expand...

I was just going to mention cichlids. Obviously it is unlikely someone with actual experience doing this with damsels exists, but from my experience with cramming damsels into tanks at LFS, they always seem to find one weak one, and kill it. Then the next one, and the next, and so on. They are VERY good at following/chasing it through the crowd too.... so I personally don't think it will work like it does with cichlids. JMO.
 
I don't think it will work. Wrasses are more interesting to watch & at least you can mix many different families or even same families with good luck. I would try to lean him that way. But then, I'm a wrasse guy.

Anthias would be another good route. Or just a good mix of non aggressive fish.
 
sniceley said:
School is not the correct word, but I could put a large group into the tank and they should do well.

/QUOTE]

Actually, they would not. You will end up with a single or a pair (if you are lucky). They will not shoal (which is the correct word) either.
Click to expand...
 
got to make the customer happy, u could also do royal grammas if u add them all at same time in a large tank. they won't school but will be a nice mix of colors with the damsels
 
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