Third (and final) fish for my 13.5 Evo

[jfoahs04]

Well, a couple of things have happened since Thursday.

• First, my fiancée talked me into waiting through the weekend before deciding to rehome the new fish.
• She named the fish (which generally means it’s not going anywhere).
• The blenny learned to fight back by Thursday afternoon and they both seem to have established their own territories. I don’t believe there was ever actual contact (fins are all in tact, nobody has wounds), but the squabbling has mostly stopped except for when one fish gets a little too close to the others cave/hole - and even then it’s not bad. They even beg for food together, side by side at the glass whenever I’m near the tank (the dottyback learned fast). The clown is still fine - he’s just happy to be included.

So it seems that the dottyback is staying. Honestly, I’m glad she talked me off the cliff. It’s obviously beautiful and it does have some personality. I’ll watch and make sure we maintain the peace, but it’s definitely looking a lot better than last week. Here’s “Nurps” (short for “Nurple” which is short for “Purple Nurple” because he’s a purple fish and nipples are funny - I swear we are adults):

 

[Rickybobby]

um yeah i have an orchid dottyback, did well with a clown pair in the evo 13.5, than put them in a 65 gallon with a massive reef, the dottyback has matured and now a complete meany, has terrifed my anthias, now the 13.5 is back up and im trying to catch the dottyback and get her to her own frag tank

 

[Cole2h2]

What lid and ligjt are you using?? I want to upgrade my tank like this! Any links for them?

 

[jfoahs04]

um yeah i have an orchid dottyback, did well with a clown pair in the evo 13.5, than put them in a 65 gallon with a massive reef, the dottyback has matured and now a complete meany, has terrifed my anthias, now the 13.5 is back up and im trying to catch the dottyback and get her to her own frag tank

Yikes. I'm not planning on adding any more fish so I'm hoping it works out. The clown and dotty barely seem to acknowledge each other's existence. The tailspot blenny was in the tank first and seems to be holding its own now. I'm hopeful the peace continues. Good luck with catching her.

What lid and ligjt are you using?? I want to upgrade my tank like this! Any links for them?

I'm using the Kraken Reef lid and an AI Prime 16 HD. If you get rid of the top, you may want to consider an auto top-off (ATO) too - the water evaporates more. I'm using this one, but there are some cheap water bottle versions on Amazon.

 

[jfoahs04]

I'm updating this again as these threads tend to show up in google searches and I'm sure I'm not the only one who has had these questions.

One month update:

Today is exactly one months since we got the Dottyback and things are going really well in terms of the behavior in the tank. The dotty did chase the blenny a little bit for the first few days. Then the blenny learned it could chase back. The back and forth continued occasionally for a week or so, but never amounted to much (no nipping, or even contact). Now they're perfectly fine with each other. They feed side by side and can be in the same area of the tank without issue. There's still an occasional lunge, but nothing more than that and even those are few/far between. The clown is still just happy to be there - the dotty and clown have really not even acknowledged each other.

So I don't have regrets. I'm honestly a little embarrassed at how ready I was to get the dottyback out of the tank in hindsight. I'm glad my fiancee convinced me to wait a bit. The dottyback is a really cool, beautiful fish and I'm glad it's in the tank.