AndyinAtlanta
Community Member
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2020
- Messages
- 95
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- 109
- Location
- Atlanta
- What state or country do you live in
- Georgia
As the title suggests, a little over a month ago I purchased two Banggai cardinalfish from my LFS. They were in the same tank at the store and for the first month they got along great. My tank is a hair over 30 gallons, has a good amount of rockwork (more on that later), a lot of coral, and two clownfish. Parameters in my tank seem great, I've got more copepods that I could ever want and sponges keep popping up left and right. I feed a mixture of pellets, frozen mysis shrimp, and frozen brine shrimp.
About a week ago one of the cardinalfish, now larger than the other, started attacking the other fish. Neither seem interested in my clownfish. The attacking hasn't stopped for a week now. At times they don't mind each other, and even hide in the same spot, but other times the bigger one will go on a full attack of the other one. No visible damage yet, but after a good battle the smaller one will hover near the top of the tank (unless he/she was able to duck into a cave). A few times I thought he had perished but when I open the lid he darts around like nothing has happened.
Thing is, I've tried catching one of them for the last week. I bought one of those medical fish traps but only the clowns venture in. My glass is curved so I can't put up a divider to corner one of them. The main problem is that I have a ton of rockwork. I can take some out of the tank (in fact I have trying to catch one), but most of it isn't movable without jeopardizing the corals that have grown over them. I have a lot of caves which my fish and CUC love, but it also makes avoid me super easy.
As callous as this sounds, and this might just be out of exhaustion (I've probably spend almost ten hours trying to catch one), but I'm currently resigned to either hoping they suddenly start to get along (from my research this seems unlikely) or...hate to say it...let "nature take its course". Does anyone have any other opinions on what might work? I read every suggestion I could find here, and tried most of them, but nothing has worked. Again, I know this sounds callous, but I don't see removing everything from the tank as an option just to protect one fish.
About a week ago one of the cardinalfish, now larger than the other, started attacking the other fish. Neither seem interested in my clownfish. The attacking hasn't stopped for a week now. At times they don't mind each other, and even hide in the same spot, but other times the bigger one will go on a full attack of the other one. No visible damage yet, but after a good battle the smaller one will hover near the top of the tank (unless he/she was able to duck into a cave). A few times I thought he had perished but when I open the lid he darts around like nothing has happened.
Thing is, I've tried catching one of them for the last week. I bought one of those medical fish traps but only the clowns venture in. My glass is curved so I can't put up a divider to corner one of them. The main problem is that I have a ton of rockwork. I can take some out of the tank (in fact I have trying to catch one), but most of it isn't movable without jeopardizing the corals that have grown over them. I have a lot of caves which my fish and CUC love, but it also makes avoid me super easy.
As callous as this sounds, and this might just be out of exhaustion (I've probably spend almost ten hours trying to catch one), but I'm currently resigned to either hoping they suddenly start to get along (from my research this seems unlikely) or...hate to say it...let "nature take its course". Does anyone have any other opinions on what might work? I read every suggestion I could find here, and tried most of them, but nothing has worked. Again, I know this sounds callous, but I don't see removing everything from the tank as an option just to protect one fish.
