Compatibility. Did I miss the mark with these fish additions?

FortyFour · 12/14/2015, 07:18 PM

Thanks for reading . I have a couple new additions (flame hawk, yellow watchman goby) that are getting some aggression from my Kole tang and lawn mower Benny. I sat on these additions for a month and didn't find anything during that time that would suggest incompatibility.

I turned off the lights and rearranged some live rock in attempt to diffuse the situation. Did I miss something with these additions? Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

Current Tank Description:
80G Tall DT. 20G sump with liverock. 15G refugium with macro. Tunze 9010 skimmer. Carbon reactor. Soft coral and LPS.

Current stock:
Kole tang
Melenarus wrasse
Yellow coris wrasse
Clown pair
Royal gramma
Lawnmower blenny

Additions:
Flame hawk
Yellow watchman goby

reefbroao · 12/14/2015, 07:25 PM

kole tang will be aggressive if fish are added after it. It may improve once they get used to each other but i'd watch them. blennies may become aggressive towards others of similar body type same with kole tangs.

If you have a qt and can catch them I'd remove the aggressors for a few days to a week to let the new additions find their safe place. Then re-introduce them which may reset their territory especially if you re-arrange some rocks.

Sk8r · 12/14/2015, 07:26 PM

Yellow watchman blusters at everybody. Tangs fuss at most. Lawnmowers are cranky, too, but probably will settle. Be sure to feed greens for kole and lawnmower.

FortyFour · 12/15/2015, 12:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by reefbroao

kole tang will be aggressive if fish are added after it. It may improve once they get used to each other but i'd watch them. blennies may become aggressive towards others of similar body type same with kole tangs.

If you have a qt and can catch them I'd remove the aggressors for a few days to a week to let the new additions find their safe place. Then re-introduce them which may reset their territory especially if you re-arrange some rocks.

I'll make an effort to catch them and place them in the refugium if it gets worse. Until then, I'm keeping the lights low and moving some rocks. Crossing my fingers on this one.

ZeeSparrow · 12/15/2015, 07:59 AM

I have a lawnmower and have been considering adding a YWG as well, but I've read some mixed reviews on their compatibility. Will be curious to know how this turns out for you. Hopefully, well!

mcozad829 · 12/15/2015, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jbuajr

Thanks for reading . I have a couple new additions (flame hawk, yellow watchman goby) that are getting some aggression from my Kole tang and lawn mower Benny. I sat on these additions for a month and didn't find anything during that time that would suggest incompatibility.

I turned off the lights and rearranged some live rock in attempt to diffuse the situation. Did I miss something with these additions? Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

Current Tank Description:
80G Tall DT. 20G sump with liverock. 15G refugium with macro. Tunze 9010 skimmer. Carbon reactor. Soft coral and LPS.

Current stock:
Kole tang
Melenarus wrasse
Yellow coris wrasse
Clown pair
Royal gramma
Lawnmower blenny

Additions:
Flame hawk
Yellow watchman goby

The only thing that you could say you "missed the mark" with would be adding the kole last as they are prone to harassing new additions. However it is not something that cannot be overcome. If it gets bad I would remove the aggressors for a day and then reintroduce them so they are the new additions.

FortyFour · 12/15/2015, 10:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcozad829

The only thing that you could say you "missed the mark" with would be adding the kole last as they are prone to harassing new additions. However it is not something that cannot be overcome. If it gets bad I would remove the aggressors for a day and then reintroduce them so they are the new additions.

Thanks, I agree. That is how I'll go about it.

I initially added him last. But then I got bold, like I do every so often in this hobby, and added these two ~6 mths later.

Sugar Magnolia · 12/15/2015, 01:01 PM

Lawnmower blennies will attack any fish with a similar shaped body, so the yellow watchman is fair game. You may end up having to remove one them if things don't settle down.

FortyFour · 12/16/2015, 12:49 AM

The kole tang is in the refugium. Going to leave it down there for at least a few days. If the blenny is still acting up towards the watchman I'll try to rig up a fish trap and hope I can catch it too.

Catching the kole was exhausting and resulted in me having to mix up the sandbed to make sure I wasn't placing liverock on top of my wrasses that took refuge in the sand. The result was probably stressing things out even more. Keeping my fingers crossed that nothing comes up. The flame hawk especially looks stressed.

FortyFour · 12/16/2015, 08:55 AM

So my recently added flamehawk has been in a constant struggle to swim near the top of the tank ever since the second I added it. It's a tall tank, so it's work. If it's lucky it will perch on the power head, but it will ditch it only to go to the bottom and back up again.

I used safety stop for the first time. The behavior is consistent with some sort of gill irritant. It didn't display this behavior at the LFS. Could it have had an adverse reaction to the safety stop 2 part dip? And if so, what would that be? Directions were followed to a T.

Thank you.

FortyFour · 12/16/2015, 11:13 PM

Talk about a snowball effect. My royal gramma has pop eye, and I noticed my coris wrasse has 2 light patches under my atinics. The flamehawk is still showing signs of a gill irritant the way it is mostly keeping to the top of the tank.

The watchman is still reclusive, perhaps because I haven't caught the blenny yet. The kole is in the refugium.

I added prime last night after stirring up the sandbed in pursuit of the Kole. Today I decided to dose Prazipro because I didn't see how it would hurt. It was a few hours ago.

As soon as things get good for me in this hobby, I get bold and screw something up.

Hopefully someone finds this helpful one day, or can comment.

Fishfreak_MA · 12/16/2015, 11:53 PM

All your fish are super stressed from all the commotion. That's when these things come about. I'm a believer that no matter how careful one is that parasites and disease are just going to always present, lying dormant waiting for the fish to become susceptible. I've seen to many stories of people taking even the most extreme precautions and still having bacterial infections or parasites show up in their display tank.
I'm not an expert on the marine side as I'm newer to a reef myself but a lot of the same principles apply. I would just let your fish relax and become comfortable and feeling safe in your tank again before I went to crazy with medications. Loving a tank to death is a very real issue in this hobby. You may loose a specimen or two but continual stress at this point in my opinion anyhow would be more likely to crash the whole tank. If you don't have corals leave the lights on sparingly while your fish recover.

As for the aggression my lawnmower blenny is an * hole but he is also comical and a nice addition to the tank. He eats a ton of algae and helps clean up any food that makes it to the sand bed at feeding time.
He keeps my orange spotted goby confined to a very small portion of the tank but as long as the goby stays in his little one and a half square foot area there are no problems and so that's how they live. I feel bad for my goby but he seems happy hanging with my peppermint shrimp so I guess it's okay. I also have a mandarin who the blenny could care less about.
Good luck and I hope all your fish pull through.

FortyFour · 12/17/2015, 08:57 AM

Thanks, you made some great points. I've subscribed to the same line of thinking until this chain of events, which was probably a result from over reading and analyzing things. The other day I looked at my tank and thought that it was the best it's ever been, and spent about a month researching what I might be able to add. Hopefully I can weather the storm here.

Coelli · 12/17/2015, 09:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jbuajr

The watchman is still reclusive, perhaps because I haven't caught the blenny yet.

I've had a yellow watchman for 15 months now; he was the first fish in the tank. He lives under a rock with a yasha goby and pistol shrimp and rarely comes out (moreso when he's hungry). They are not very social fish and "reclusive" is something you should expect rather than stress about. My starry blenny is a jerk too, but not a lethal one.

Is it possible the flame hawk just likes being up high but once it gets up to the powerhead it doesn't like the current?

Don't throw medications at the tank without clear signs that there's a problem. One of the hard parts about this hobby is learning sometimes you have to just let things ride and settle. My royal gramma has some light patches too right now, probably from fleeing from the anthias, but the RG keeps the gold assessor confined to the underworld behind the rocks so turnabout is fair play.

FortyFour · 01/10/2016, 11:04 AM

Closing the loop on this.

Things settled down quite a bit after removing and reintroducing the Kole (5 days). There's less aggression there, and it allowed the Flamehawk and watchman to better establish themselves.

I wasn't able to remove the lawnmower blenny, but the watchman found it's territory. I saw a few battles between the 2 but the goby held its own (it was also bigger). Around that time I left on vacation for a week. I haven't seen it since and I'm suspecting it's a goner. I never really saw it eat and all things considered, I didn't give it the best chance to acclimate well.

The royal gramma that had popeye is fully healed.

As for the prazipro treatment, I did 2 treatments. Each time, it noticed the flamehawk looked more comfortable. I'm convinced it was gill flukes. Whatever the case, I'm feeding a better variety of food now and supplementing more often as more sustainable approach. Other than my green toadstool leather, the corals look fine a few weeks later. The leather might be shedding, and it might be unrelated.

FortyFour · 02/08/2016, 11:27 AM

Watchman goby came back from the dead. All is well these days, knock on wood.

A.Astore · 02/08/2016, 12:55 PM

Glad to hear your watchman has come back... you going to charge him with desertion

Glad everything turned around for you. It can be stressful when you make a decisions and then slowly watch all your hard work start to unravel.

12/14/2015, 07:18 PM	#1
FortyFour Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Denver, CO Posts: 371	Compatibility. Did I miss the mark with these fish additions? Thanks for reading . I have a couple new additions (flame hawk, yellow watchman goby) that are getting some aggression from my Kole tang and lawn mower Benny. I sat on these additions for a month and didn't find anything during that time that would suggest incompatibility. I turned off the lights and rearranged some live rock in attempt to diffuse the situation. Did I miss something with these additions? Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. Current Tank Description: 80G Tall DT. 20G sump with liverock. 15G refugium with macro. Tunze 9010 skimmer. Carbon reactor. Soft coral and LPS. Current stock: Kole tang Melenarus wrasse Yellow coris wrasse Clown pair Royal gramma Lawnmower blenny Additions: Flame hawk Yellow watchman goby

12/14/2015, 07:25 PM	#2
reefbroao Registered Member Join Date: Oct 2015 Location: Seattle Posts: 747	kole tang will be aggressive if fish are added after it. It may improve once they get used to each other but i'd watch them. blennies may become aggressive towards others of similar body type same with kole tangs. If you have a qt and can catch them I'd remove the aggressors for a few days to a week to let the new additions find their safe place. Then re-introduce them which may reset their territory especially if you re-arrange some rocks. __________________ Reefer 170 E series.

12/14/2015, 07:26 PM	#3
Sk8r RC Mod Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: Spokane WA Posts: 34,628 Blog Entries: 55	Yellow watchman blusters at everybody. Tangs fuss at most. Lawnmowers are cranky, too, but probably will settle. Be sure to feed greens for kole and lawnmower. __________________ Sk8r Salinity 1.024-6; alkalinity 8.3-9.3 on KH scale; calcium 420; magnesium 1300, temp 78-80, nitrate .2. Ammonia 0. No filters: lps tank. Alk and cal won't rise if mg is low. Current Tank Info: 105g AquaVim wedge, yellow tang, sailfin blenny,royal gramma, ocellaris clown pair, yellow watchman, 100 microceriths, 25 tiny hermits, a 4" conch, 1" nassarius, recovering from 2 year hiatus with daily water change of 10%.

12/15/2015, 07:59 AM	#5
ZeeSparrow Registered Member Join Date: Feb 2015 Location: Spokane Valley, WA Posts: 788	I have a lawnmower and have been considering adding a YWG as well, but I've read some mixed reviews on their compatibility. Will be curious to know how this turns out for you. Hopefully, well! __________________ Build thread: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2499447 Current Tank Info: 75G w/29G sump, Reefbreeders Photon 48, RO Classic 110-INT, Jebao DCT-8000, 2xJebao RW-8, 2xEheim Jager 150W heaters, Tunze Osmolator ATO, TLF GFO

12/15/2015, 01:01 PM	#8
Sugar Magnolia Registered Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Northern VA Posts: 17,691	Lawnmower blennies will attack any fish with a similar shaped body, so the yellow watchman is fair game. You may end up having to remove one them if things don't settle down. __________________ Adrienne The only thing to fear is fear itself....and spiders.

12/16/2015, 12:49 AM	#9
FortyFour Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Denver, CO Posts: 371	The kole tang is in the refugium. Going to leave it down there for at least a few days. If the blenny is still acting up towards the watchman I'll try to rig up a fish trap and hope I can catch it too. Catching the kole was exhausting and resulted in me having to mix up the sandbed to make sure I wasn't placing liverock on top of my wrasses that took refuge in the sand. The result was probably stressing things out even more. Keeping my fingers crossed that nothing comes up. The flame hawk especially looks stressed.

12/16/2015, 08:55 AM	#10
FortyFour Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Denver, CO Posts: 371	So my recently added flamehawk has been in a constant struggle to swim near the top of the tank ever since the second I added it. It's a tall tank, so it's work. If it's lucky it will perch on the power head, but it will ditch it only to go to the bottom and back up again. I used safety stop for the first time. The behavior is consistent with some sort of gill irritant. It didn't display this behavior at the LFS. Could it have had an adverse reaction to the safety stop 2 part dip? And if so, what would that be? Directions were followed to a T. Thank you.

12/16/2015, 11:13 PM	#11
FortyFour Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Denver, CO Posts: 371	Talk about a snowball effect. My royal gramma has pop eye, and I noticed my coris wrasse has 2 light patches under my atinics. The flamehawk is still showing signs of a gill irritant the way it is mostly keeping to the top of the tank. The watchman is still reclusive, perhaps because I haven't caught the blenny yet. The kole is in the refugium. I added prime last night after stirring up the sandbed in pursuit of the Kole. Today I decided to dose Prazipro because I didn't see how it would hurt. It was a few hours ago. As soon as things get good for me in this hobby, I get bold and screw something up. Hopefully someone finds this helpful one day, or can comment.

12/16/2015, 11:53 PM	#12
Fishfreak_MA Registered Member Join Date: Nov 2015 Location: The Berkshires, MA Posts: 53	All your fish are super stressed from all the commotion. That's when these things come about. I'm a believer that no matter how careful one is that parasites and disease are just going to always present, lying dormant waiting for the fish to become susceptible. I've seen to many stories of people taking even the most extreme precautions and still having bacterial infections or parasites show up in their display tank. I'm not an expert on the marine side as I'm newer to a reef myself but a lot of the same principles apply. I would just let your fish relax and become comfortable and feeling safe in your tank again before I went to crazy with medications. Loving a tank to death is a very real issue in this hobby. You may loose a specimen or two but continual stress at this point in my opinion anyhow would be more likely to crash the whole tank. If you don't have corals leave the lights on sparingly while your fish recover. As for the aggression my lawnmower blenny is an * hole but he is also comical and a nice addition to the tank. He eats a ton of algae and helps clean up any food that makes it to the sand bed at feeding time. He keeps my orange spotted goby confined to a very small portion of the tank but as long as the goby stays in his little one and a half square foot area there are no problems and so that's how they live. I feel bad for my goby but he seems happy hanging with my peppermint shrimp so I guess it's okay. I also have a mandarin who the blenny could care less about. Good luck and I hope all your fish pull through.

12/17/2015, 08:57 AM	#13
FortyFour Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Denver, CO Posts: 371	Thanks, you made some great points. I've subscribed to the same line of thinking until this chain of events, which was probably a result from over reading and analyzing things. The other day I looked at my tank and thought that it was the best it's ever been, and spent about a month researching what I might be able to add. Hopefully I can weather the storm here.

01/10/2016, 11:04 AM	#15
FortyFour Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Denver, CO Posts: 371	Closing the loop on this. Things settled down quite a bit after removing and reintroducing the Kole (5 days). There's less aggression there, and it allowed the Flamehawk and watchman to better establish themselves. I wasn't able to remove the lawnmower blenny, but the watchman found it's territory. I saw a few battles between the 2 but the goby held its own (it was also bigger). Around that time I left on vacation for a week. I haven't seen it since and I'm suspecting it's a goner. I never really saw it eat and all things considered, I didn't give it the best chance to acclimate well. The royal gramma that had popeye is fully healed. As for the prazipro treatment, I did 2 treatments. Each time, it noticed the flamehawk looked more comfortable. I'm convinced it was gill flukes. Whatever the case, I'm feeding a better variety of food now and supplementing more often as more sustainable approach. Other than my green toadstool leather, the corals look fine a few weeks later. The leather might be shedding, and it might be unrelated.

02/08/2016, 11:27 AM	#16
FortyFour Registered Member Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Denver, CO Posts: 371	Watchman goby came back from the dead. All is well these days, knock on wood.

02/08/2016, 12:55 PM	#17
A.Astore Registered Member Join Date: Oct 2015 Location: Waynesboro, VA Posts: 418	Glad to hear your watchman has come back... you going to charge him with desertion Glad everything turned around for you. It can be stressful when you make a decisions and then slowly watch all your hard work start to unravel.