Is it possible to keep a school (7+) humbug damsels (Dascyllus auranus) in a big tank (187 gallons) along with other semi-aggressive fish (a school of 9 yellow tailed blue damsels, 3 smithi damsels, a massive royal gramma, an extremely aggressive pair of true percula clowns, a bicolor angel, and eventually a yellow tang and a pair of twinspot hogfish)? I have kept the twinspots before and they were pretty fiesty, and my current bicolor is a pretty domineering fish. I read that they are less aggressive if added after other smaller fish and are kept in bigger (5+) groups. On WetWebMedia it says that humbugs should be kept in groups. If so, I'm going to pick up the school tommorrow.
Schools?
- Thread starter fishfreak2009
- Start date
When humbugs get big (and they do...probably at least 4" I would say) they will kill (or attempt to) everything in your tank.
ya, I did some more reading on them in the reefcentral archives and figured out what holy terrors they really are. I figured they would be like other damsels (or even like African cichlids) where if you overstock them in a tank full of rocks (like a fowlr) they wouldn't be so aggressive. But I don't really want all my other fish dead.
If you want schooling fish similar to damsels, get either blue green chromis or blue chromis (well those 2 are my fav... but there are other chromis that will) if you stock 5+ they mayyy school.... no guarentees in this, also cardinals school in larger groups.
Man...watch out for the chromis. Everyone I know that has bought them gets sick of them. And they are probably the hardiest of SW fishes.
I left the intake screen off my canister one day, the next morning...no chromis.
I quickly realized that in their stupidity they must have schooled into my marineland.
I unplugged, and started to disconnect it for the obvious maintenance required when you have 10 fish get chopped by your impeller. All of the chromis were fine, in the canister, doing laps around the media. Wow. Didnt lose a single fish.
I left the intake screen off my canister one day, the next morning...no chromis.
I quickly realized that in their stupidity they must have schooled into my marineland.
I unplugged, and started to disconnect it for the obvious maintenance required when you have 10 fish get chopped by your impeller. All of the chromis were fine, in the canister, doing laps around the media. Wow. Didnt lose a single fish.
WOW those were such lucky fish. I love my chromis so much! Have 5 left out of the original 10..Be sure to have a cover over the top of your tank though since I found so many stuck to my curtains. Since I did the eggcrate top no more missing chromis.
We ended up having to do a complete tear down to get the fish out of the tank. They just drove me crazy.
I've had a chromis live in the canister as well, they are little tanks! The last ones didn't make it through the filter sock with 2300gph force down of them though!