My Tangs are Defending my Clownfish??

[Perpetual Novice]

So let me preface this by saying that yes my tank is small for those two tangs. They get along great and are just in the tank for algae control until I move them to my larger system.



So so recently my female clown has become more and more aggressive. To the point where the male now has to resign to the bottom corner of the tank. Today I sat down and observed my tangs seeming to break up the domestic dispute. Every time the female started acting up the hippo tang arrived and carefully slid between them and guided the female away. The yellow tang even joined in too. This video is not a one off and doesn’t even do a fantastic job of demonstrating the behavior I’m talking about. Does anyone know what’s going on here. I can’t think of any other way to explain the behavior than that the tangs don’t want to see the conflict for some reason.



Heres the link to the video:

 

[Old Fritz]

I had a firefish that was being bullied by my orchid dottyback and my clowns would attack the orchid whenever it got too close to the firefish so my firefish started to hang out with my clowns

 

[Perpetual Novice]

I the panic from that tang as the clownfish swim away hahah

 

[Aardvark1134]

This is actually very common behavior in african cichlid tanks. Quite often the tank boss will take the stance of if you want to fight someone then you are going to fight me. In cases like that anyone who fights or is mean gets to deal with the boss as only he has the right to pick on others.

 

[Jimmy Long]

My scopas tang defends my two maroon clownfish, mostly from my snowflake eel, my scopas tang HATES my snowflake eel, will always try and tailwhip it if possible.

 

[Jesterrace]

Yup, seen that too. Before he turned into a butthead himself, I had a Read Head Salon Fairy Wrasse who would insert himself in the middle of squabbles between my Diamond Watchman Goby and Scissortail Dartfish. Too bad he went rogue about a week later and started chasing everything in the tank.