Blonde naso tang attacking magnificent rabbit fish

[sduggs929]

Hi everyone today my blonde Naso tang has completely gone after my magnificent rabbit fish. Rabbit fish has a few marks on his tail. He did this last week with my blue tang and same thing blue tang had a few marks on its tail. Now the Naso tang leaves the blue tang completely alone. Is he just asserting his dominance or do you think he has to go? Should I leave them for a few more days to work it out? He's half the size of the rabbit fish too And they’ve been together for about 4 months with no issues prior.

 

[CAPSLOCK]

How big is the tank? Tangs (and angels and others) tend to be more aggressive in smaller quarters - as they grow, what they consider to be "smaller quarters" changes accordingly.

 

[sduggs929]

5’ long tank. Blonde Naso tang is 3” long

 

[CAPSLOCK]

He will eventually outgrow that tank. It's up to you if you want to rehome him now, or see if the aggression subsides for now... But as he grows, it'll just be a matter of time until the aggressive behavior returns.

Those are the main problems with those large tangs - the aggression as they grow, and the outright size they get to that requires such a large tank for the long term.

 

[sduggs929]

Yeah that’s what I knew going in. I was renting this fish just until he he too big. I was hoping to get to keep him until he got at least a little bigger but oh well. LFS says they’ll take him so I’ll be giving him to them

 

[1spotpooalot]

you can try the mirror trick...put one up against the side of the tank, prfereably a larger mirror that spans the width of the tank. I had similar issus adding a new sailfin to my 7ft tank with an established scopas. The Scopas went nuts right away, but the mirror stopped it. It seems to make the added fish look like 2 fish, plus add the aggressors own reflection and he sees another aggressor. I kept it up for 3 weeks and just took it down and Ba BAAAMMM....the aggression came back in minutes, however less. It just buys time to see if they can eventually get along. Long term, your naso will have to go to a bigger yank though

 

[italquam]

Naso would be better in an aggressive tank , I recently picked up a Picasso Trigger and Dogface Puffer for same reason from fellow reefers . They were too aggressive in their tanks. If you decide to re-home him let me know, maybe we can work something out.

 

[sduggs929]

Yeah I ended up getting rid of him. A LFS can and caught him and a diamond goby I wanted gone Friday. If I knew before I would of tried to work something out with you.