Clowns Bullying Fire Fish

Just picked up a couple of red firefish gobys for my 120 gal reef. I acclimated them and everything and all fish were fine. Then about 4.5 hrs later my 2 clowns decided it was time to start bullying them chasing them all over the tank. They were all fine after the lights went out. But it started again in the morning. I got the 2 clowns out and are now in my refugium. How long should I leave them in there before putting them back in the display? Any other ideas on how I can keep the clowns from bullying them? They have never acted like that before. Thanks in advance

 

are they maroon clowns? firefish are quite docile too , they should all calm down and be friends soon i hope .

 

No, they are Percs

 

is there anyway of maybe doing a rock shuffle to make their enviroment a little different?!

 

That might be possible, would I have to move all the rock around or just add or move a few pieces around?

 

if ya want too but just make them find a new home in the tank and all should be good

 

Well if you moved them into your fuge that should lower the territorial nature they are displaying. I would think that if you give it a week when you replace the clowns into the display tank it will be a new habitat and then they will have to seek out "their" territory. This will allow the firefish to adapt and then the clowns would be the "newbies"...less territorial. I had a firefish with my clowns and I never had a problem with aggression, actual the only time my clowns are aggressive is with eachother. Do you have eggcrate on the top of your tank? Firefish are jumpers, mine jumped 4 times out of the tank and all these times there was no reason to. It died the fourth time.

 

mx36

I know where you are coming from. I have both a firefish goby and a maroon clown. Initially they got along fine, progressively the clown started to chase the firefish but didn't bother the firefish during feeding (so the firefish wasn't starving to death at the least). As things continued the clown became even more aggressive and stated going out of its way to nip at the firefish even while feeding. This eventually caused the firefish to be so bullied that I would be lucky to see it come out of hiding every 2 or 3 days.

Unfortunately firefish are so passive that if bullied they can starve to death. I eventually moved the firefish to a 75 gallon new setup.

I'm not sure what it was about the firefish, but it was the only fish that the clown purposefully bullied.

 

i too had the exact same problem..(2 percs taking one firefish)The only thing that truely worked for me was rearranging the rockwork.. i took my clowns out for awhile and put them back in but they still kept bullying... i would try to rearrange the rocks

 

Go to your LFS. Buy a book that has a picture of a clownfish. (It will typically be much larger than in real life). Rip out the page or photocopy it with a color copier. Tape it to the glass of the tank.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: Only do this if you are sure your clowns are healthy, are getting good foods (hopefully supplemented with additional HUFA's and vitamins). This is to purposely stress them out for a day. If they aren't healthy, stressing them out is not a good idea.

I know it sounds mean, but it works.