Thinking about adding an 6" Emperor angel but wondering if my Blueline pair will be ok with it. The male Blueline is about 4-5" and he is not the friendliest, he occasionally chases the female Blueline angel.
The Xhatches are pretty tame and so is the Maroon clown, sometime this week I’ll be adding the anthias.
Need you opinions, thank you!!
GENERALLY it is advised to only keep 1 kind of angel per tank.
This is a rule of thumb that has been passed down - it is also one I have not attempted to refute yet. Given the size of your tank oyu may be OK - but again you are tlaking about some pretty big fish that will require a lot or roaming room and it may not be.
I look at it this way - if I add a fish and it’s NOT ok I have ot take the fish out and find a new home for it. How easy will it be to get a fish out of oyur tank if it needs to go? How easy will it be to find a new home for a large angel like that?
Personally I wouldn’t try it - but that is just MY opinioin - I’ve been known to be wrong before.
Just ask my wife
Have to say I as well don’t have a lot of experience. Angelfish will often nip corals, so many reef geeks avoid them. Even when working on FO systems, I have typically kept to only one angel. I believe, nothing is a guarantee, adding a large angle and a pygmy angle(or a pair) may be alright. Two angels from the same genus typically not a wise idea.
I believe where you can break the rules is if you REALLY break the rule. What I mean by that is if you try two different species of angels you might get aggression, if you try 7 different species of angels you might get a little aggression, but it is spread out far enough that if everyone is fed it will work out alright. A good example of an aquarium that did just that can be found in “Ultimate Marine Aquariums†by Mike Paletta. I could be wrong, but I believe DPA has this book in stock.
General rule of thumb when adding new fish and it is at all possible there will be aggression:
Tame maroon clown? Give him time. 
BTW, saw your mention of the used tank you have. I have just about $0 at this point, but perhaps next month it will be a possibility. I will keep it in mind.
Thanks for the replies.
I’m going to away from getting another angel since it won’t be easy or near impossible for me to take out the aggressor in case of trouble.
DE Premium Aquatics have 2 gorgeous Purple tangs in but had they are also
very aggressive so I’m staying away from them too. Love to get one but my last one I had was a terror, chased every fish I had.
Np problem on the tank, I might take it to DPA to sell it… who knows.
Tank is practically new, with stand, huge sump and an Iwaki MD-70 pump.
What other fish fish did your Purple chase. Tangs will chase other tangs especially when there is not enough algae added/present for them to eat. Almost used them as an example a minute ago of another fish where 2 purple tangs won’t work, but 7 in a large enough tank, with the right diet and other conditions will. They also will often show a large amount of aggression for the first 5 minutes a new fish is added, but then leave it alone once they’ve made the point that I’m the boss your my little ******.
I saw those Purple’s yesterday they looked very nice.
I am about to fight this same battle lambo. Im in the process of pulling all the stony corals out of my tank and give them to the wife. Sell off the hqi fixture. And stock a mainly just fish tank. Prolly leave mushrooms and polyps. Retro in some t5’s and go. But i have a blueface now, that i really wanna keep. Always loved the queen. And really want a blueline. So i don’t know what the hell to do! A golden bfly, maybe a male auriga, with the few fish i have that im keeping and call it good. Just don’t know how easy it will be to separate them, if its a problem.from a lfs perspective, im supposed to tell u that it wont work. But that may change in the near future!
BJ : just get an adult CLARION angel as your showpiece and get it over with already !! LOL…
The purple constantly chased the yellows, day and night. He also shared the tank with a PBT, they didn’t fight but you can tell there was some dislike between the two. With all the chasing around, all the other small fish got so stressed that they died one by one. At feeding time the purple and the yellows were very aggressive so the smaller fish got even weaker from not getting their share of the food.
Fishguy9 - how big is your tank? I’m deciding against getting another angel because I already have a pair of Bluelines and the larger one does chases the smaller one specially when feeding. I think another large angel would be bad news and since it would be almost impossible for me to take the aggressor out, I’m taking the safe route.
For what I have read, Queen angels are very aggressive and mean and so far from experience, my Bluelines are no tame angels either. I have another Blueline in my eel tank and the reason I have him there is because he used to bully my Xhatch trigger when they were in QT. He was 3" and the Xhatch was 7". So he went to the eel tank and afterwards I bought myself another pair of Bluelines for my 300 tank.
Did you feed the tangs 4-5 times a day? If not in a tank with 0 algae on the walls and decor it makes sense they would be aggressive. An invasion of yellow tangs swopping in to feed where the lonely purple tang was… of course he would defend the area especially since there wasn’t much algae to graze off of before they showed up. (he didn’t know they couldn’t leave his area) Some people might get away with mixing a single yellow and purple with a couple other tangs, but an invasion of yellows that needed to feed, makes sense to me.
I think fishguy9 had a 75, but was switching to a larger ~100 or 120.(somewhere in there) He’ll chime in.
How often do you feed now and what types of foods? Those who keep mixes of angelfish or tangs says that diet is key to limit aggression and keep the animals healthy long term. It has been shown that larger angelfish require sponge in their diet for good long term health. Perhaps adding some frozen marine angelfish food will help. There are two brands that make them, so if they don’t like one try the other.
It can be difficult to maintain a tank throwing in enough food to keep everything happy, but limiting food addition to not tip the balance and grow algae and bacterias. What type of skimmer do you have on that thing?
Had a 90. Swapped it all into a 180 with a 75 gal sump. So im prolly around 225 total volume.
There is still a misconception about my tank, yes it does have the fake coral center but it also has at least 125 lbs of LR on the bottom of the tank.
The tangs had plenty of rock to graze on and I used to add plenty of gracilaria algae tied to a rock for them to eat. IMO it didn’t work because the purple tang was in there 1st and he was already an aggressive fish plus my tank is not big enough to accommodate 1 purple and 3 yellow tangs.
I now feed PE mysis, Hikari enriched brine, plankton, marine cuisine, emerald entree, Rod’s food(2 types) and some flakes. None of them have tried pellets but working on it (New Spectrum). Once I get the tangs, I must get them to eat nori sheets.
I feed them 3 times daily and my skimmer is an ASM G-4.
BTW, how do you guys get your fish to eat certain foods. Like to get my angels to eat frozen angel prepared foods. When they were in QT, I tried but they didn’t touch it.
I didn’t realize you had rock in the tank, I thought it was all in the basement in a sump.
Have you tried adding just the one food at a time several feeding times in a row soaked in garlic extract?(I know they often contain some, but wouldn’t hurt to add a drop or two more. Are you dissolving the cubes first? If they don’t eat one brand try switching to another brand of the same thing. Could leave the brand they didn’t like now in another 3 months and they may take it then. Not really sure why, but this happens.
I have about 125 lbs in the tank and about 200 lbs in the sump and refug
I’ll try the garlic and yes I do pre rinse all frozen foods first in a fine mesh net.
Do you happen to know what are anthias favorite foods?
To be perfectly honest my hands on experience with Anthias are extremly limited. My tanks are just too small and both of my previous two employers condireded them too difficult to even try.
If I had to take a geuss I would think Cyclop-eeze would be among one of their favorites and a pretty healthy staple.
From 2001 Marine Fishes by Scott Michael, “Meaty foods for zooplankton feeders, including mysid shrimp, vitamin-enriched brine shrimp, and frozen preparations. Feed at least 4 times a day.”
Then I’m on the right track, I fed all those every 2 hours. Tried cyclop- eeze and it took them a while to start eating it. Picky things…
Hey LamBo, I’ll bring you a little bottle of decapsulated Brine Shrimp Eggs to the meeting. All fish like those. like little bits of candy for them. high protein and fats for extra engerny. i got a big jar ive been working on for a while.
Make sure he is coming before you pull it out of the freezer Ken. He hasn’t said yet.
Jon, Decap, BS eggs are freeze dried. but I store them in the fridge anyway. meanwhile there are some compatability charts around.
Hmmm?? Looks like you can even get an APP for that, For you geeky wireless types.
http://www.uiappview.com/aquaria/
That could come in handy while cruising the LFS and you spot a fish you just have to have. and keep track of your tank maintenance too.
That APP sucks. You have to type in your pH, temp, and… there isn’t even a spot for ORP. That’s sooo dated technology. Where is the real time stats and graphs? Blah.
[quote=“kaptken, post:16, topic:3318”]
Hey LamBo, I’ll bring you a little bottle of decapsulated Brine Shrimp Eggs to the meeting. All fish like those. like little bits of candy for them. high protein and fats for extra engerny. i got a big jar ive been working on for a while.[/quote]
Thanks, I appreciate the offer but I already have plans since it’s MNF. I’m a huge NFL fan.
Love to get some from you, maybe next time… Thanks again.