My new Hippo tang is a wannabe thug.

[RockStacker]

I bought a hippo tang (about 1-1/2") and at first I was concerned that it would get bullied by my oscellaris clownfish.
However, this little firecracker seems to have a Napoleon complex. The first thing he did after acclimation was to charge after the green chromis and the oscellaris (which were much bigger).
He even went after the lawnmower blenny that was just basking on a rock. The lawnmower would have none of that and pulled no punches. So the tang stayed away from him after that.

It has been a few hours already and the tang would still charge at the oscellaris. The clown at this point seems to be pulling his punches and just swats the smaller tang away. After a while the tang retreats and catches his breath, only to try and charge at the clown later.

I hope this is just normal introduction issues with the tang. Otherwise this little bugger will get himself killed.
My oscellaris is no teddy bear. He has already bullied to death two other oscallaris that he originally came with, and a bunch of damsels and chromis through the years. Why he is being so tolerant of the tang, I do not know. Maybe he is mellowing with age lol.

 

[little_fish]

Fish are funny, but I would be really concerned with how small that tang is. As that size they really only just have settled out of the larval phase and need a pretty constant stream of food to make it. Very few tanks can provide that and they have a super high mortality rate for the size. I would be feeding multiple times a day to try and help him out.

Also, these guys really need to be in a tank that is a minimum of 6ft, preferable 8ft long.

 

[RockStacker]

Ok, then I messed up on the research.
I thought I read that the hippos were among the 75+ gallon tangs like the kole yellow eye and mimic tangs.
Now that I went back to the same sources they actually say 180+ gallons.

My tank is 6 feet long and 100 gallons.

The fish are all getting along fine now, and the tang seems to have deferred seniority to the oscellaris (for now).
The tang even found a small cave in the rockwork where it wedges itself in at night to sleep. At first I thought it died and it got blown into the cave by the water current.

Right now it does not appear to be too fond of nori sheets and caulerpa/chaeto that I am dropping into the tank. It prefers to graze on the rocks and also takes some smaller bits of bloodworms and mysis.
I think it is getting enough food for now because this thing can POOP!

 

[FishyReef]

If its not too fond of nori yet, try mixing in some emerald entree. I think I recently read that the hippos and yellow belly hippos are less herbivorous then other tangs though so you should be okay. It probably wont eat the chaeto though so I'd leave that out of the mix. Glad everyone has settled in. Fingers crossed your little tank makes it long term! Is this a frag tank that you have? 6ft and 100g must not be very tall!

EDIT: I thought I read the piece about being less herbivorous on LA, but just went to look and can't find where I saw that - so I must be wrong! editing here to clarify my earlier comment :)

 

[SarahSmile]

that's actually a pretty standard tank size fishy, 100 gallon: 72 long, 18 wide, 18 high