Curbing Agression with Timeout in the Refugium.
 

Hey Guys,

I have a 2 year old neon dottyback who was being quite aggressive (as they are known to be) to a newly added African Flameback Angel, so I caught him today and put him on timeout in the refugium section of the sump and left the angel in the DT. (Pics below)

Dottyback in Sump:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/attach...1&d=1488926429

African Flameback Hiding inside some Hammer Coral:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/attach...1&d=1488926757


System is a 55 gal DT which overflows to a 25 gal sump with a skimmer compartment, refugium, and return section. I'd estimate that the refugium section is about 1'x1'x1', the dottyback is about 3 inches long.

How long do you think I should leave the dottyback on timeout before he'll forget which rock caves were his in the tank above?

Cheers,
J

Until he apologizes nicely..

Weeks if not months, give the pygmy plenty of time to establish territory

lol he already said he was sorry but I told him that's not good enough.

Im thinking we'll start with a month. In the mean time, I've had to turn the red lights off on the sump, might add a screen or something to keep him safe from the return compartment.

pretty good idea to ground the turkey.

The fish is just acting like he would in the wild.

When this occurs, the dotty will rush into the side of the opponent till the guts come out. Nasty fish.

Sometimes changing your aquascape can help in the DT.

Now that you've gone to the trouble of successfully isolating him to the refugium, you might think seriously of just trading him in. The dottyback is just behaving like himself and the problem will likely resurrect itself with the angel or any new additions.

I know that... I'll probably ask my LFS if they'll take him but the thing is that he's been my favorite fish since I got him and the 55 gal isn't too heavily stocked. my hope is that he will fall into the same behavior pattern that he had before adding the angel.

He used to roam the tank on patrol all the time but never really chased anything for more than a brief challenge and then that other fish would back down.

J

For anyone who is interested, after 21 days in the sump, I'm going to try to reintroduce the dottyback to the tank. My hope is that he's been out long enough to not remember where his territory is.


Here he is in the breeder net.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/attach...1&d=1490737155

And here's the dwarf angel swimming below.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/attach...1&d=1490737481
They haven't acknowleged eachother yet.


I'll consider this a success if he comes back aggressive to anything other than the pigmy that I added at the beginning of the month. Will report back once he is released.

[edit: added the number of days in the sump]

Good to hear.

So the bad news is that he picked up right where he left off. I guess the good news is that the angel seems to be pretty fast and strong after being unmolested for the past few weeks.

Question now is, will the aggression die down with time (pecking order sort of thing) and how long do I wait hoping for that before I have to step in and try to catch this bugger once and for all now.

Such a shame, he was my favorite for a long time.

The aggression won't improve, unfortunately.

This was interesting. Crazy how aggressive those little dottybacks are. Perhaps you could trade up for an orchid dottyback, which are supposedly less nasty. Keep us posted.

Ok here's the day-later update.

TL;DR The time out didn't work out as I thought, but the dottyback has settled down.

The dottyback calmed down overnight last night (I turned the lights out shortly after my last post to try to get the fish to sleep it off). The fish can now swim near eachother and cross paths without getting into a high speed chase from one end of the tank to the other.

I'll leave it with the following inconclusive remarks about what I was trying to do:
I originally thought that by removing the dottyback for a number of days (21), he would forget about his territory and thus, upon reintroduction, he would not chase down the new fish. That might have had some effect, but it probably didn't because when he came back, he primarily showed aggression to the new fish anyways.

Something that makes me think that this was still a good idea though, is that it gave the angel a chance to start eating and establish his own territory within the tank, without being harassed every minute. After living for almost a month without being beaten up, I think that helped him get through being picked on for a few hours yesterday.

I think we can put this thread to bed.