Maroon clown getting picked on

[robo100]

Hello,
I have recently purchased a maroon clown fish and he is getting bullied in my tank. The agressor is a 3 stripe damsel. The tank is an 80 gallon reef tank with a single yellow tang, Naso tang, Yellow tail damsel, foxface lo. The only one that seems to be picking on my new clown is the 3 stripe damsel. My question is would it be worth setting up a nano tank to house my damsel? I know I can't keep other clowns besides maybe one more maroon clown. What should I do about this damsel? What I really want is some nice friendly fish with coral. I purchased the tank used which included the yellow tail damsel, naso tank and 3 stripe damsel. I later added the yellow tang and clown.

 

[Krish]

Damsel fish are very territorial. They will usually try and bully anything added to the tank after they have settled in. I've even seen "beau gregory's"(sp) run parrot fish and tangs around the reefs here if they get too close to their territory! It is a funny sight to see...That aside, I couldn't say if the damsel you have will ease up over time. Seperating him may be your only option if the clown is what you really want to keep. Some people say remove all your rocks and re-aquascape and then re-introduce the fish all together, but I don't know anyone who will take it to that extent for 2 small fish, but you never know. I wish you all the best and hope youget things sorted out

 

[matts125]

I had the same problem with my 3stripe, infact I have similar fish, naso, yellow tang. my damsel went crazy one day trying to kill all my fish including my large tangs, and he was actually hurting them, it was so severe that I had to completely tear my whole system down to the last piece of live rock to get that fish out. Otherwise he was going to kill all my fish... infact 2 of them didnt survife the ordeal. 2- goldhead sleaper gobies...

Matt
ps. did I mention get him out!?!?:lol:
by the way Good luck on that...

 

[twilliard]

I would say give it a little time. I have a three stripe and a tomato clown in a 120 and the clown now picks on the damsel. At first the damsel was picking on the clown, all is well now.
Actualy they swim together side by side all the time now.

Good luck if you decide to take it out. You will pull every rock to get it out.

 

[Sk8r]

One fast way to get a fish out of a display tank: get a lot of empty barrels and borrow a big pump. Pump the water out, pretty fast. As you get within a foot of the bottom, hollow one corner of your sandbed. Pump some more. When the water gets down to the last, your fish will congregate in the low spot. Net-time!

Put the water back as rapidly as possible. Low tide has just ended.

Your corals will not suffer from such a fast turnaround. You should test the water and skim like crazy, because you will have kicked up a little bit of muck digging that corner, but you should be ok within a few hours.

The offender can go to the lfs. No one was that stressed, and no one got hurt and no rock got knocked down.

 

[robo100]

Just a quick update....
I am going to keep a close eye on the damsel. I ended up re-aranging some of the live rock for a better look which I beleive screwed up the damsels territory. After about 3 hours the clown was swimming around the tank and the damsel didn't seem to really care. When my clown went back to the left side of the tank my other damsel (Yellow tail) chased him off but the 3 stripe damsel that was such a problem didn't bother the new clown at all. I also added a small piece of tonga branch rock and the clown seems to like hanging out there, but the damsels don't seem to want anything to do with the new branch rock. I will keep a close eye on them to see what happens.

If I do decide there is no choice but to remove the damsel I have three 30 gallon containers that I used to move the tank from one house to another house. These came in very handy since it's only a 80 gallon tank I was able to transport 100% of the water and put the live rock into the same water for transport.

 

[jmp21677]

If you want a happy reef I would probably get the maroon striped out at the same time. As many of us know they can get VERY territorial. Not only that but they hurt when they attack you