dottyback compatibility

S

stanleyg1

AC Members
Feb 4, 2007
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Santa Monica, CA
i have a 12gal nano cube and would ultimately want to have a clown fish and anemome plus corals, which of course i am patient enough to wait the appropriate time for... but i just couldnt wait to get one fish at least. i have a brilliant purple/pink dottyback. just wondering what are the compatibility issues with this type of fish, whether or not it will work with a clown and what other fish may or may not, in your experiences, work with this type. i am open to suggestions.
thanks again in advance!
stan
 
As far as I vaguely recall reading, Dotty's are OK w/ pretty much all but other Dottys (eg - just 1 per tank).
 
I have a royal dottyback in my 30 gal reef tank.

Like Squawkbert says, they are extremely aggressive toward other dottybacks. They will fight til one dies. Another fact that's often overlooked by people but I can attest to based on my experience is that they are also extremely agressive to anything that looks close to dottyback specie. They will be very agressive toward grammas, gobies, and blennies. My dottyback actually stressed out my scooter blenny to death. Blenny was in the tank first for 8 months before dottyback was added. I saw the dottyback chasing around ONLY the goby and blenny. I thought they would get used to it eventually, but two days later, I found the scooter blenny dead.

To answer your question specifically, my dottyback and percula clown get along fine. Most of the time, dottybacks swim through cracks between rocks while clown likes to stay in the open area. Now, I'm not sure how the scenario would change if I added an anemone... since that would increase the aggression in the clown.

Hope that helps.
 
i am planning to get a nice enough area for the clown to hang out, like a well established frogspawn or hammer, then introduce him. hoping that they will each have there own space to be, therein raising hopes of less confrontation.
 
well, its only been two days but i got a hammer coral (quite a nice size, larger than a fist) and an Ocellaris clown... and the clown fish will not stop racing back and forth against the glass. initially the dottyback was into darting across the tank, 'snapping' at the clown fish in an attempt to assert his dominance. well, it has worked because the clown just will not settle down.
i have asked a friend and he says the two will calm down and figure it out. i just dont want to wait around too long and have a dead clown on my hands. how do i know that these two are indeed "figuring it out'? and how do i know if the clown's action are not of a 'stressed' fish on the path to a heart attack?
thanks for any replys!
 
well, the saga continues... they have finally gotten used to each other, the clown has some 'bite' marks on his tail and one of his pectoral fins, and the clown is slowly becoming less frantic with his swimming behavior. i am supposing that the natural course of things have come to an equilibrium with regards to the dominance issue and territorialistic behavior of the dottyback. like sands through the hourglass...
 
I kept a fridmani pseudo in a 20 gallon with a couple of clowns and it was very aggressive. The clowns were always nervous around the dottyback's corner of the tank. I wouldn't recomend keeping a dottyback in a 12 gallon with any other fish. Just my 2 cents, based on what I experienced.
 
whoa. you guys are right indeed. the dottyback still is taking severe measures to maintain his dominance, just today taking a nice bite out of the clown's pec fin. his new name is '*******'. i'm thinking that i cannot teach an old fish new tricks... is it time to trade him out? (i'd rather a peaceful tank, not one of darting aggression) my thinking is this behavior will not stop until only one remains, your experience?
 
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