Can I Add a Lawnmower Blenny to a Bicolor Blenny?

[roibenami]

What do you guys think? would they fight? I have a 90g display with quite minimal rockscape... My current bicolor blenny has been there for about 6 months... here is my current fish stocking :

Pair of Benggai Cardinals (eggs hatched in the male's mouth I can see them swimming in there, will probably dump them tomorrow... getting off topic lol)
cleaner wrasse
melanurus wrasse
bicolor blenny (duh)
diamond goby
and a copperband butterfly...

All are getting a long fine, I just got rid of a yellow tang and am in need for some algae eating fish... I want the lawnmower blenny but I wanted to ask what you guys think... here's a recent video of my tank (yellow tang and the chromis are no longer there)

 

[eatbreakfast]

There may be some initial aggression, but should work out overall.

 

[roibenami]

There may be some initial aggression, but should work out overall.

Thanks... I am planning to add the new fish with an acclimation box...

 

[The Reef Dork]

Let us know how it goes - i've wondered that before.

 

[recess62]

I had both. First the bicolor then the lawnmower added about 6 months latter. No issues

 

[b_evans06]

I have a bi color and a tail spot blenny. They share the same hiding hole sometimes and swap out who hides in it. A couple of flare ups in the beginning but now they eat off the same algae clip and no issues. I know you asked for lawnmower but wanted to add my experience with 2 blennys. My tank is a 75g.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Hmm... maybe I'll add one to my reef...

 

[roibenami]

Well I thought I'd give an update, this didn't really work out for me...

I failed with the acclimation box, since the only one I could get around here was $120 I decided to make my own and the fish just escaped within 5 minutes... quite the fail.

The Bi-color blenny was very aggressive towards the new lawnmower blenny... They were together for 6 days and throughout the entire time he would not let the lawnmower blenny leave the top of the gyre pump (cp-40)... Anytime he tried to get near the rocks he would chase him back up there...

I thought giving it some time might help but I saw some nipped fins and also It really wasn't looking like the aggression is declining in any way... So today I caught the bi-color blenny and gave him back to the LFS... If anyone is interested in how I got him out... I just know where he sleeps and I shiponed him out with a 2" hose... along with about 10% of my tank water and an acro frag... right into the floor (the fish never left the bucket I was lucky)...

So now the lawnmower blenny is free to roam my 90g tang as the only algae eater other than a few snails... In some better news I've also added a yellow coris wrasse that escaped the acclimation box, I was quite afraid my melanurus wrasse will kill it as It previously killed a flasher wrasse I added and it's twice the size of the yellow coris I got... But they are getting a long just fine and swimming together...

 

[David Walter]

This is exactly the kind of real world feedback I really appreciate. I don't really love the look of the lawnmower but was considering it for its algae eating power. However, I have a bi-color Blenny and had read Blennies don't like other blennies much so I had not braved it. It makes me sad when a fish gets picked on or killed by its tank mates. I was just considering it again because I am finally at the end of a green hair algae nightmare and would ,love something that would finish what is left off since it is not really safe or realistic for me to hand pick off all of what is left.

Snails just seem like a waste of money, they just get turned over, eaten by predators and die over half or more of the time which just adds to the problem. Crabs seems more like scavengers than good algae eaters, that or they cannot alone take care of what is left as fast as I would like and they of course also die or are killed by bigger crabs so again just add to the problem. I have learned the hard way this whole cleanup crew thing is somewhat of a sham. A few crabs and snails because they are cool and will get some of the uneaten food is fine but a "cleanup crew" is a farce is my opinion. Adding a bunch of crabs and snails to a tank that clearly already has high nitrates and phosphates is only going to lead to more death and decay because they are just as intolerant or more so as anything to these toxins probably because they have smaller bodies to deal with them.

On that note for anyone lucky enough to read this thread and is dealing with a green hair algae problem.

DO NOT buy cleanup crews except as stated above you want a few scavengers for fun.

DO NOT bother with refugiums unless you want to grow algae for fun, food, or copepods as macro algae reduces phosphates and nitrates very little in the scheme of things and really can't compete with green hair algae. Maybe if you started with a refuge but if your problem is like mine and it just gets bad all of a sudden it is too late for that.

OF COURSE always use RO Water and a good salt(I use instant Ocean but some people hate it, however, I can't find a salt mix everyone agrees is awesome. What I read is that people are getting ammonia readings from Instant Ocean but the studies I looked at said even if that is the case then just be sure to let your salt water mix sit for 24 hours before you put it in your tank and the ammonia will be gone, so that is what I do now).

DO Reduce your day lighting to eight hours a day, you can still run your blues for longer so you can enjoy your tank longer and things look better in blue light anyway. My fish stay awake even with just blues until they go out for the night and I run them for about 12 hours. I use Halo LED lights and just give it a long sunrise and sunset period with only a 8 hour daylight period. I have also added a cheaper 165W but seemingly effective LED from Amazon that has blue and white periods so I just sets the white to 8 hours and blues to 12.

DO Watch your feeding. I use an Eheim automatic feeder($25) and a mix of a lot of different dry foods(again don't believe the guys at the fish store because I read a scientific study that shows dried food add very little more in the way of pollutants to tanks than frozen and this is a great way to add a big variety of foods). Just make sure you have it dialed into a setting in which they are done eating in about two minutes. I grind my food to a pretty fine consistency(think fine coffee grounds, small enough to get out the hole without clogging it). I also add a drop or three of garlic extract to my food mix but not enough to let the food get wet or stuck together. My feeder gate is at pretty much the lowest setting and I have about ten small to medium happy healthy fish. I also have the Eheim feeding station($8) as well directly under the feeder which allows the food to hydrate before it sinks down and enters the water column. I cut a small piece of louvered ceiling panel to fit perfectly inside top of the feeding station because once the fish discovered the food was coming out of it they swam up in it and startled each other in doing so one ended up jumping out. I was lucky to be right there and put him right back in the tank and quickly resolved this problem.

DO Make sure your tank has good water movement(this can be a catch 22 as well because everyone says add lots of live rock but at some point too much live rock will obstruct your water flow). I recently removed a few large pieces and I am convinced this help solve my problem. They were pieces that didn't have good places to hold plugs anyway and were shading too much of the tank. They did add a cool aquascape cave like features but in the end they were doing more damage than good by what was I think creating dead spots. I have three large powerful pumps in the tank so it wasn't a lack of pumps or water movement via the pumps, it is just when you hit a wall you stop so the less walls the less dead spots you might have.

Last but not least if you run into a situation like mine where it all of a sudden just gets out of control, you will need a GFO or Phosphate reactor and media that removes phosphates. In the end it is about the cheapest, safest, and easiest solution out there. The Hang on Back GFO reactors are maybe $50 which considering how simple they are is kind of overpriced but it is what it is. A good pump that will give you the flow you need for a GFO reactor and will cost about the same so $100 total for the reactor and pump. The media is the only ongoing cost but once you get it under control just change it out every few months. I had good luck with Cobalt Complete Reef for my initial kill off. In no time I had a ton of dead algae floating on the top. I am now trying phosban because I can get a good price on it from Amazon subscribe and save. In theory you can just put phosban in a super fine media bag and add place it under your return if you have a sump but GFO reactors do a better job of making sure the media stays in, the all the water that passes into the GFO it passes through the media. I have also read if placed directly under the return you can eventually disintegrate the media. If things start to revert I will go back to Cobalt but I think this will work just as well, the Cobalt was a little spendy.

The point here is you have to get the phosphates out of your tank and even if you are reading zeros the presence of green hair algae means you are well above zero because it cannot grow without it. I firmly believe if you follow this advice your problem will be solved. It worked for me and I tried A LOT of things before I hit on this solution including the "DO NOT's" above. I watched days worth of videos and read miles worth of articles and in a nutshell this is what worked for me and my green hair algae problem was really really bad and totally killing off my corals.

Anyway, before I head too far down a tangent, I just did this search for compatibility and saw this thread. No way I would chance it now. So many people as above and especially the "guys" at the reef store will say "it shouldn't be a problem" and next thing you know you have a dead fish. I have two true percs and the guy at the fish store said a maroon "should not be a problem if the percs are established". It turned out the true percs ripped that maroon to shreds in a hour, I could not have saved it if I wanted to. It was sad to see. I have been in the hobby a long time and this is just one of many examples of "reef-safe", "it shouldn't be a problem" fish that caused me a lot of problems. I now pride my tank all being all friendly completely non-aggressive fish now and they really seem like one big happy family. The only thing any of them seem to bite is my hand

 

[A sea K]

This is exactly the kind of real world feedback I really appreciate. I don't really love the look of the lawnmower but was considering it for its algae eating power.

What a lawnmower blenny lacks in looks will more than make up for in personality.

 

[David Walter]

What a lawnmower blenny lacks in looks will more than make up for in personality.

I actually don't doubt that. Blennies in general are rather entertaining. I love the constant moving and perching they do. Frankly I kind of hope maybe my bi-color doesn't last forever or I might even try to nab him one day to trade in. When that day comes I will probably go for a lawn mower to replace him since I expect it will have the same fun personality and hopefully the added advantage of being a bigger algae eater. My bi-color seems to nip at algae but I think he might be nipping at corals too. He is probably the most suspect fish I have in my tank because he is always "taking a bite" and I am just not sure he isn't nipping things I don't want him to. I never see him walk away with a piece of algae in his mouth and he recently knocked over one of my corals nipping some part of it but I didn't see exactly where. He might have just nipped at the base that had some algae on it but I have my eye on him now....