Blue Green Chromis/yellow clow goby

[Angelajean]

Hello to all,
We have been busy with wedding out of town, homeschooling etc. Life.

I do have a question about chromis behavior with the goby. We have 1 blue green chromis. We got 2 as a starter fish from LFS. (Hubby and son got schnookered.) 1 died. We added a yellow clow goby a couple of weeks ago. He is doing great. At first just hung out on the bottom, now he goes up to the top rocks, in cracks and crevices, the bottom, everywhere.

The blue green chromis always goes up top when he is there and brushes his fins across the goby. The goby "Gumby" doesn't seem to care but my son is concerned. We have a firefish and the chromis picked on him. We found him dead last week. Firefish was alive the previous night before and appeared to be fine. All our water tests have been good. Doing regular water changes, testing and filter changes.

My son is concerned that the chromis is a little aggressive and wants to take him back to LFS. What do you think?

Thanks,
Angie

Thanks

 

[FishyReef]

A 14g biocube might be too small for the chromis. They typically need a 30g, and are quite active swimmers. If he did contribute to the firefish's death, it could be that he is being more aggressive than normal due to feeling cramped. Brushing fins across another fish doesn't really sound like aggressive behavior to me, but it wouldn't be terrible to return him and get a fish that is really going to be okay long-term in a small tank. Perhaps another firefish or blenny instead?

 

[Bifferwine]

Chromis are generally passive, non-aggressive fish. However, they are a type of damsel so they are capable of being aggressive. It is very common for chromis to bully other chromis to the death, so I think it's possible that the chromis bullied your other fish as well. Like FishyReef stated, it's probably a good idea to take the chromis back to the store simply because the tank is too small for him, and when fish are cramped in a small tank they tend to act aggressively towards each other. There are lots of good choices for fish for a 14 gallon, and you could pick out something else that will get along with everyone.

 

[Angelajean]

I agree that the tank is probably too small for him. The chromis is just so fun to watch. He likes to play in the jet.

New rule is no more fish bought without research. We all have iphones so it isn't like we could not look it up. I also think having a list of possible fish in the notes section of the phone is a good idea. I told both hubby and son that the LFS wants to sell you fish. I am not saying that they do not want you to be successful, but it is always easy to spend other people's money.

We are thinking of a pair of ocellaris clownfish or a tail spot blenny. My son wants a tail spot blenny.

We seem to be getting some green algae and a little cyano on some of our live rock. We have a gabillion snails we got from reefcleaners.org. Not sure we have the right kind of snails though. Also may have orange flatworms. I siphoned most of them out. They were tiny on the side of the mushrooms coral.

Angie

 

[FishyReef]

I have a tail-spot blenny and she is my favorite fish in my tank (so far) :) It took her a few weeks to settle in before she was really active, but now she swims all over the place and is a total ham! Little_Fish recommended the tail-spot to me, and I now recommend this fish to others - you can't go wrong with a tailspot! A pair of occelaris would be fun too. In a 14g biocube, you could probably eventually get both the pair of occelaris and the tail-spot, just leave a good month or more in between the additions (as long as the only other fish you have is the clown goby - 3 fish plus the little clown goby is really your max long-term).

 

[FishyReef]

Oh, and reef cleaners does a great job putting together cuc packages, so I am sure the snails they sent you are good mix. If you don't have a turbo snail, you might want to add 1-2 of them to your tank, they are great at eating algae. You can also increase the flow to the area that is getting the cyano and see if that helps, in addition to keeping your nitrates down. As far as the flatworms, you can use flatworm exit - but you might want to post a picture of them first here or google flatworms to make sure that's what they are. Chichimom had a recent post about red flatworms (not sure which section of the forum), and there is good advice there about how to get rid of them.

 

[little_fish]

You can get rid of flatworms with Flatworm exit. It works great and is non-toxic to your other critters. But the flatworms do release toxins as they die, so you need to remove as many as you can before you treat and then remove them as you are treating. They kinda jump into the water column so they are easy to suck out. Then run carbon for a few days.

 

[wontonflip]

+1 everyone

And like littlefish said, they release toxins. Have plenty of water ready for water changes.