Anthias mixing in new tank?

killergoby · Jul 30, 2020

I previously had a trio of dispar anthias but one suicided against the opposite glass when I went to transfer them into a new tank system (that's what I get for not seeing the tank in 4 months, they weren't used to humans anymore). Now I have two dispars and I'm trying to decide what to do about this situation. Originally I was planning on two trios of anthias, but now that I have a pair temporarily I'm at a bit of a loss for what my best course of action should be. I was considering going for a group of 2-4 small female lyretails and one much larger male lyretail with the hopes that the similar colors might prevent the dominant dispar from bullying the smaller dispar to death. I much prefer the colors on my smaller dispar and would hate for her to have a rough time so I'd like to move quickly on solving this. Another option I considered was buying more dispar anthias but since there aren't any local healthy specimens I am aware of I would have to order and ordering dispar seems like a recipe for having 50% of the new arrivals dead. There are some healthy carberryi locally that I could also try as a dispar aggression diffuser. I have had carberryi with dispar in the past and they seemed to treat each other almost as the same species, but to me they look so similar that I'd rather the lyre tails or something else if possible or equivalent.

Any advice I could get from people with experience diffusing aggression in pairs or mixing anthias species would be much appreciated.

SDguy · Jul 30, 2020

You don't mention how big your tank is. I personally never had a problem mixing dispar, lyretail, carberryi, and ignitus in a 4' 150g tank.

Indytraveler83 · Jul 30, 2020

I can't speak so much on mixing, but a bit of advice on my own experiences:

Urinoma is rampant in the current supply chain with anthias. If you go local or from a normal vendor, assume they have it and treat from the start. I was able to salvage 2 animals out of 8 that I bought locally.

TSM Aquatics has anthias for reasonable prices and fully treats and qt's their fish. I got 4 lyretails from them and didn't lose any to disease (though two were eventually killed due to aggression).

killergoby · Jul 31, 2020

SDguy said:
You don't mention how big your tank is. I personally never had a problem mixing dispar, lyretail, carberryi, and ignitus in a 4' 150g tank.

The tank my anthias would be going into is also 4', but not as many gallons (75 w/ 40g fuge)

killergoby · Jul 31, 2020

Indytraveler83 said:
I can't speak so much on mixing, but a bit of advice on my own experiences:

Urinoma is rampant in the current supply chain with anthias. If you go local or from a normal vendor, assume they have it and treat from the start. I was able to salvage 2 animals out of 8 that I bought locally.

TSM Aquatics has anthias for reasonable prices and fully treats and qt's their fish. I got 4 lyretails from them and didn't lose any to disease (though two were eventually killed due to aggression).

Yes I'm aware of Uronema, lost my first set of dispar except one to this disease. Locally I can have the LFS quarantine the fish for me, but online I wasn't aware of any within my price range which quarantined for you (I had only heard of marine collectors). Thanks for letting me know about TSM, wish they had more in stock right now!

reefproaquatics · Jul 31, 2020

killergoby said:
Yes I'm aware of Uronema, lost my first set of dispar except one to this disease. Locally I can have the LFS quarantine the fish for me, but online I wasn't aware of any within my price range which quarantined for you (I had only heard of marine collectors). Thanks for letting me know about TSM, wish they had more in stock right now!

Reach out to TSM. They have a bunch of anthias in QT right now.

killergoby · Aug 9, 2020

Update:

Within days after starting this thread, I watched my smallest female dispar lose all of her tail fins and go into hiding underneath a rock. I would only see her come to the edge of the hiding hole to eat, but I was able to feed her at least 3 times a day still so I'd hoped she would pull through. I also moved over a 3.25" lone Carberryi from another tank but that didn't make the bullying any better.

I ordered and received an additional dispar and 4 female lyretails from TSM and they all came in eating and perfectly healthy. With the larger group, the bullying (aside from intra-lyretail bullying) abated, and the new dispar didn't seem to get any of the aggression the old dispar was receiving. This may have been due to the new dispar being only 1.5".

Within 2 days of the new group of anthias being present, the old dispar came out and she's become a normal part of the school again. She has always been an aggressive eater and even with her missing her tail, her behavior hasn't changed at all.

The tail is starting to regrow quite a bit now that she's back to pigging out 5 times a day.

I attached images of the dispar alone, with a squamipinnis and carberryi, and with only the carberryi. You can see that her tail is still a stub but beginning to regrow.