ECU_Pirate
New member
We added a Lamarck's angelfish last night, along with a lawnmower blenny and engineer goby. I followed a suggestion I’d read and heard about which was to put the fish in at night. The lights normally go off at 10:00 pm, but we turned them off around 7:00 pm, floated the bags in the tank while we went out to dinner (about 2 hours), came back and then drip acclimated the new fish one at a time before adding them to the tank.
This morning I woke up to check on the new inhabitants and found one of our already established fish, a Bristletooth tomini tang, dead on the sand. My first thought was that the Lamarck’s angel had attacked him. She is quite a bit bigger, about 3 times the size of the tang. Liveaquaria says they may chase small, docile planktivores such as anthias and wrasses, but I can't find anything online about how they do with tangs. My tang was always the one that did the occasional chasing, so I wouldn’t call him docile. I did notice that when we put the Lamarck's in she hid behind the rocks near my tang's territory. She’s there again this morning. My anthias is fine, and none of the other fish appear to be missing or dead.
But there are a few things I’d noticed just within the last few days that could point to something else. The tang seemed to be hanging out more at the back of the tank. We’ve had a hair algae outbreak, so I figured the tang was most likely picking algae off the glass where it’s hard for me to clean as well as the rocks in the back. He never did like strips of nori no matter how I presented them, but he would eat mysis shrimp cubes and Emerald Entrée which has both mysis shrimp and spirulina. He usually pooped in a front corner of the tank and I did notice that I hadn’t seen him pooping much. I also thought he looked slightly smaller than normal, but he ate daily. Certainly he didn’t starve to death, right? Could he have been sick? I’ve attached photos. Please let me know your thoughts as to what might’ve happened to him.
Edited to add - tank parameters are all good. No ammonia, no nitrites, nitrates less than 5 ppm.
This morning I woke up to check on the new inhabitants and found one of our already established fish, a Bristletooth tomini tang, dead on the sand. My first thought was that the Lamarck’s angel had attacked him. She is quite a bit bigger, about 3 times the size of the tang. Liveaquaria says they may chase small, docile planktivores such as anthias and wrasses, but I can't find anything online about how they do with tangs. My tang was always the one that did the occasional chasing, so I wouldn’t call him docile. I did notice that when we put the Lamarck's in she hid behind the rocks near my tang's territory. She’s there again this morning. My anthias is fine, and none of the other fish appear to be missing or dead.
But there are a few things I’d noticed just within the last few days that could point to something else. The tang seemed to be hanging out more at the back of the tank. We’ve had a hair algae outbreak, so I figured the tang was most likely picking algae off the glass where it’s hard for me to clean as well as the rocks in the back. He never did like strips of nori no matter how I presented them, but he would eat mysis shrimp cubes and Emerald Entrée which has both mysis shrimp and spirulina. He usually pooped in a front corner of the tank and I did notice that I hadn’t seen him pooping much. I also thought he looked slightly smaller than normal, but he ate daily. Certainly he didn’t starve to death, right? Could he have been sick? I’ve attached photos. Please let me know your thoughts as to what might’ve happened to him.
Edited to add - tank parameters are all good. No ammonia, no nitrites, nitrates less than 5 ppm.
