Chromis?

fishkeeper8774 · Feb 21, 2020

Bought a pair of Chromis a month ago that were about to die, the seller gave em to me for free and I took them. Brought em home and they were doing perfectly fine, eating well and being very active. Only issue here is that they got bullied by the other fish in the old tank and their scales were doing pretty bad.
Three weeks later, I bought another pair of Chromis hoping to have a shoal of 4 (yes it is recommended to have a group of 5 or + but I thought it would be fine since I already have a pair of Lyretail Anthias). They were perfectly fine for a week until today I noticed aggression between the two pairs but weirdly, it seems that the coloration between the two pairs are way different. One having characteristics that reminds me of the Blue Chromis and the other pair looking like the typical Blue Green Chromis. The “blue chromis” pair seems to way more aggresive but that could only just because of dominance in size...

Here is the “Blue Chromis”

Here you can tell that the “Blue Chromis” has a blue stripe over the mouth and a denser coloration of Blue on the tail and the upper fins than the normal Blue Green Chromis that is below here:

What do you guys think?
Maybe because of the location they were caught? Or because of the health... since the “Blue Chromis” were healthy when I picked them up compared to the Blue Green which were dying...

Mrtakeoff53 · Feb 21, 2020

I had a similar experience where much larger Chromis were aggressive towards the smaller ones in my tank.

Brad Waddell Wrath's Reef · Feb 21, 2020

Chromis are mean.

fishkeeper8774 · Feb 21, 2020

Did you guys have similar experiences where you had chromis with prominent blue features that isn’t like of the typical Blue Green Chromis that we usually see?

Haydn · Feb 22, 2020

It is difficult to make a definite identification from your photos but looking at them I think you are getting aggression because you have two different species. The fish in your first pictures look like Chromis atripectoralis (black axil chromis). The ones in the second set may be Chromis viridis but TBH I'm not sure. They may be C. Caerulea or even Altrichthys alelia (Alelia Damselfish)

Google the latin names and look at good quality photos (with confirmed identifications not hobbyists photos) then compare them with your fish.

They do not tolerate each other and you will get aggression until one species is dead.
This is probably one of the main reasons why some people say they are peaceful as a group and others say they just kill each other, they are not talking about the same fish.

fishkeeper8774 · Feb 22, 2020

Haydn said:
It is difficult to make a definite identification from your photos but looking at them I think you are getting aggression because you have two different species. The fish in your first pictures look like Chromis atripectoralis (black axil chromis). The ones in the second set may be Chromis viridis but TBH I'm not sure. They may be C. Caerulea or even Altrichthys alelia (Alelia Damselfish)

Google the latin names and look at good quality photos (with confirmed identifications not hobbyists photos) then compare them with your fish.

They do not tolerate each other and you will get aggression until one species is dead.
This is probably one of the main reasons why some people say they are peaceful as a group and others say they just kill each other, they are not talking about the same fish.

The answer I was looking for! I think I’m dealing with a pair of Chromis Atripectoralis and a pair of Chromis Viridis.

ShepherdTech · Feb 22, 2020

I have 6 Chromis and they were ganging up on my hippo tang while he was smaller...fins all beaten up.. I kept thinking they will be sorry when he gets bigger!