Clown fish killed by tang?

[Jmcg89]

So I have a 180 gallon tank, I had a pair of clowns breeding and once they started they were really pushing a bunch of the other fish around.
One day I found the female dead on the bottom with what looked like a big gash in her side.
This was 6 months or so ago and today I found the male with similar wounds. The picture is of the male.

The female and a hippo tang would often chase each other. And I assumed it was her tail scalpel that killed her.

I haven't seen the male chasing the hippo but he has similar wounds.

The only difference is I had added back 5 of his children to the main tank. There are 6 anemones in there and they had separated into two groups on opposite sides of the tank and seemed to not be fighting at all over the last 2 weeks.

Has anyone seen anything like this?
Could it have been his children? A couple of which were similar size by now or do you suspect the tang?

The tank has
Powder brown
Hippo tang
Mag fox face
Mel wrasse
Lawnmower blenny
2 chromis
And now 5 other clowns.

Unfortunately I'm out of town but the neighbor who feeds was able to get him out and take this picture

Thank you.

 

[Formulator]

My money is on the hippo. Mine is a bully.

 

[Jmcg89]

Yea thats kinda what I'm feeling based on how fast it happened and the injury.
Mine is getting kind of big for the tank I think.

 

[Formulator]

Yea thats kinda what I'm feeling based on how fast it happened and the injury.
Mine is getting kind of big for the tank I think.

I have a 120g and mine became a problem around age 5 or 6 if that helps. I was going to rehome it/trade it in, but I had a major tank crash and the problem resolved itself…

 

[dsh92056]

Sorry to hear. I had 2 clowns in a mixed reef where all of the fish were together for well over a year and got along with each other. A carpet anemone housed the clownfish and they laid eggs regularly. The other fish would always try to get at the eggs only to be chased off by the clownfish. One morning I woke up and fed the fish and I was like where are my clownfish. I found both of them dead and their eggs they had laid were gone. I will never house a pair of clownfish again in a mixed reef.

 

[Tamberav]

I just want to say that clown looks like it had clean up crew picking at it. It doesn’t look like so much of a gash as that cuc members went for the meaty bits.

You can see its face was picked at too. May not have been a wound and this could have happened after death.

Which means we don’t know the cause.

 

[Jmcg89]

I just want to say that clown looks like it had clean up crew picking at it. It doesn’t look like so much of a gash as that cuc members went for the meaty bits.

You can see its face was picked at too. May not have been a wound and this could have happened after death.

Which means we don’t know the cause.

Sorry to hear. I had 2 clowns in a mixed reef where all of the fish were together for well over a year and got along with each other. A carpet anemone housed the clownfish and they laid eggs regularly. The other fish would always try to get at the eggs only to be chased off by the clownfish. One morning I woke up and fed the fish and I was like where are my clownfish. I found both of them dead and their eggs they had laid were gone. I will never house a pair of clownfish again in a mixed reef.

I'm in the same boat now as well. It caused a lot of disruption