Mistakes easily made

Well i have made a huge mistake last week when i added stock to the tank
currently i have a yellow tang and wanted to add a different tang

and with this i went for a vampire tang with doing reaserch on the fish it self and not the compatabilty of it with the yellow, normally the genrul rule with the tangs is if they look alike they will attack so with this in mind i went for a completly different colour and shape to the yellow

here is my yellow tang






and here is my vampire tang


as you can see they are different shapes and colours

now my mistake was not reaserching the way the 2 live to geather now look at the tail of the yellow and the vampire

now the white part on his tail is a razzor which is used to scrape rocks and defend its self and well as attack now if you look at the vampire it hasnt go the same thing my mistake was thinking this is a good thing meaning that the yellow tang wont feel threatened by the other boy was i wrong

now i have had these 2 together for 1 week with out problem and all was well or so i thought

i last checked on the fish at 1am and came down at about 9 am to find that the vampire wasnt arround the rocks as he normally is so i went in search of it and just couldnt find him i suspected the worst and thought he was dead somewhere so armed with a flash light i went searching for him.

i looked in caves every where then something caught my eye but thought it didnt look like the vamp until i flashed the light on him, he had lost his tail and i thought it was the lobster that was to blame (not one of my purchases tbh) it wanst until he came out of hiding when the main lights came on that i could see the extent of the damage









as you can see the red marks are from the razzor on the yellow not too sure how he lost the tail but after reading a little about the 2 fish together found that it can be a fully on attack for 20 mins straight after adding a vampire to a yellow tang tank untill the vamp is dead, i was lucky they tollerated each other for a week and that the fish was still alive after i found out about it

he is happily sitting in my sump under the same tank while i nurse him back to health but he may never grow his tail back


so the morale of the story is reasech the fish you want then research the compatability of your fish then do a search on the fighting of the fish you have in the tank

Oh the poor thing!! I hope he does get his tail back - he looks sad without it doesnt he?

What are you going to do with him when he is better karl - are you able to put him in another tank?

yes as i have the 2nd tank which is suitable for him so he will go in with the damsels if his tails grows back

sorry for your vampire tang

when i put my female fighter in the big tank for a minute one of the other fish bit her tail off completely

it took two weeks but now her tail is fully grown back. i wish the same happens with your tang

well as suspected he has past away today found him floating near the pump in the sump

shame really but he has been getting worse every day

inspecting the body out of water properly you can see some definate puncture wounds about 6 one side and 3/4 the other

sorry you lost your tank K this happens to all of us from time to time
but we live and learn don't we - sorry mate


dekker

Oh thats a shame, he was such a lovely looking fish too