Stocking with Territorial Fish

[customdusty]

I’ve only recently begun adding fish to my reef tank and have encountered a problem with a territorial powder blue tang. I ordered several fish to stock the tank, but unfortunately due to some of the problems with the airlines during the past few weeks, the fish arrived out of the order that I wanted to introduce them in. I ended up with a powder blue tang and cleaner wrasse going in first, and they have done just fine. Yesterday, I introduced a Bartletts Anthias, which my tang immediately and furiously attacked. Need not to mention that the Anthias is a goner. I am scheduled to take in a few more fish in the next couple of weeks, but I am worried that my tang may go after them as well â€"œ those being a pair of clowns, radiant wrasse, African midas blenny, and red spotted blenny. I’m not sure what to do at this point, so any insight would be appreciated. Do I need to get rid of the tang? Should I take him out for a while and introduce the other fish and then re-introduce him? Should I just put the fish in and cross my fingers? Build some sort of dividers in the tank temporarily?

 

[ssavader]

The tang is an aggressive species and with the tank all to himself, it is his territory now! Move him to your QT tank if it is big enough, then reintroduce him last as he is the most aggressive of the species you mention. If you don't have a QT yet, then maybe your LFS will hold him for a small fee, which would be less than the cost of all of your new fish, which may suffer the same fate as your Anthias, which had no chance what so ever of surviving a tang attack.

 

[Flavum]

You need to regulate on that powder blue!

 

[flameangel88]

Unfortunately Powder blue and Yellow tangs are the worst when it comes to adding new fish in my experience. Couple of weeks ago my new Goldflake got a stab on each side and one of them is right next to the stomach area which I'm surprise it's still alive. Last weekend I added a couple of new fishes I'd to rearrange 70% of the rockwork and had the tank covered completely till the next morning and this eased the aggression. I only had the lights on for the morning feeding then had them off again till at night. if you don' take the tang out then try to change the rockwork and keep the tang busy by put putting mirrors in front of the tank and chances it will attack its own reflection instead.

 

[Beach Bum 70]

you can try to put a mirror on the side of the tank.I had the same problem with a SailFin Tang. After 1 day he left my other fish along. Try it it worked for me!

 

[spamin76]

Another thing to keep in mind is that although you can play with the fish and the order, you can't make a territorial fish non-territorial overall. It might be possible to manage it through some of the ways people have mentioned above, but really the fish is just doing what comes naturally. Even managing, it still may end up being a problem in the longer term, it just might not be as constant.