Frustrated with the tank now what...

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by daplatapus

I've read doing a re-aquascape will blur the territorial lines and start everyone off from scratch. Any way of moving a few things?

I've personally never had any success with this method. The territories that the fish we have the most problems with (tangs in particular) have 'territories' in the wild that are dozens to hundreds of times larger than most people's tanks. Some don't even maintain territories.

I don't think it's an issue of most fish thinking "hey, this tiny pile of rocks is my pile of rocks", it's an issue of another fish with features or colouration that triggers aggressive tendencies in them being placed inside what they would normally consider their personal space and them not being able to get away from each other. Eventually they just used to one another, but I don't think re-arranging the rocks has much of an impact on their psychology beyond scaring everyone in to a corner while your arms are in the tank.

[Magma]

So would you recommend an acclimation tank then rather than changing up the tank layout?

[asylumdown]

An acclimation box where everyone can see each other is worth a shot. But have you confirmed that aggression is the issue? Are you quarantining your new fish? Even if it's not to treat them for disease, I have yet to see a fish in a fish store that couldn't stand to gain some weight, many are downright emaciated by the time you get them home. I use the QT period as much to get them eating and confident as I do to treat them for disease. Dropping a fish that's half starved and has just been flown half way around the world in a dark, tiny bag in to a tank full of healthy, aggressive resident fish is a rough way to introduce any new arrivals. If you've got low levels of ecto-parasites in your system like ich that your resident fish have all developed acquired immunity too, the combination of stresses would be enough to take out most fish.

If you're not already doing it, I'd recommend bringing your new fish home to a QT tank where it's just them and you can introduce all the foods they'll need to compete for in the big tank. Once they've visibly gained some weight, then I'd introduce them in an acclimation box and wait until your aggressive fish stop taking runs at it. My powder blue would have killed my copper band had the copper band not been in perfect shape when I put it in, but because of the QT process the copper band was able to defend itself AND compete for food until the PBT lost interest, which took about 5 days.

[Magma]

I will admit in the past I havent always used QT methods. I try to never buy a fish that is looking weaker I try to pick out healthy looking fish when I buy them.

But the last round of fish I tired out was 6 Bicolor Anthias. I had them in QT for about a week and saw them all eating and acting normal. I added them to my tank and they all went straight into the rocks like I was expecting them to. I would say in less than 20 days I went from seeing all 6 to not seeing any of them, almost like they are being picked off one by one. No abnormal tank spikes, all the other fish seem normal, corals are doing fine & the ones that lasted always came out quickly to feed.

Needless to say loosing 6 fish in a month really turned me off of anything for the tank in the last 8 months. Just been doing regular water changes and cleaning the glass, really frustrated with it and im slowly working my way back up to trying more but I dont want to be stung from something I might be able to avoid.