Green Chromis Advice

Deezill · Mar 19, 2018

Hello R2R Peeps
I purchased 8 Green Chromis from LiveAquaria. All seemed healthy but only 3 of them made it to the DT from QT. They were very small. I think they were picking each other off. Anyways the three that I have now swim around together and everything is great. I have a 150 gallon tank and want to add more fish. I love the Green Chromis. Can I add more without them picking each other off? Will the three that in the DT kill the new Chromis? I think I want to purchase like 15 more from LA. Please let me know your thoughts. I really need to stock the Deezill reef 150 current list of fish:

Green Chromis x3
Yellow Tang x1
Scopas Tang x1
Dart fish x2
Clown Fish x2
Pajama Cardinal x3
Cleaner Shrimp x1 (there was 2 but I can’t find the other one)

GoldeneyeRet · Mar 19, 2018

Green chromis usually kill each other off.

Deezill · Mar 19, 2018

GoldeneyeRet said:
Green chromis usually kill each other off.

So you would not advise putting 15 more together?

BellaCoop · Mar 19, 2018

I did not even know Chomises kill eachother off. I have 6 swimming around my 55g and they just handout together. No aggression with them that I have seen at all.

Deezill · Mar 19, 2018

Yeah they do pop each other off. I am not sure how it works. I am not sure how the decision is made on who gets whacked. I just know started with 8 from Live Aquaria and every other day or every other other day one would come up missing until I had only 3 lol.
Disease was not a factor all were healthy. But yep they wack each other.

themcnertney · Mar 19, 2018

GoldeneyeRet said:
Green chromis usually kill each other off.

Yup!!! I used to have 13 in my 220 about four years ago and one by one they dropped. I now have 2 left.

lagatbezan · Mar 19, 2018

^yup!
I think they pick on each other one by one starting from the weakest one and move on to the next. I tried 6 of them in my 220 almost 10 years ago and after a little while there were only two left and each one stayed on opposite side of the tank.

Deezill · Mar 19, 2018

Ok so I got 3 green Chromis and they are happy I won't mess with that then. Seems like I better be happy with the three that tolerate each other. i was going to purchase maybe 15 more lol

NS Mike D · Mar 19, 2018

I had four when I started, one went missing very early on. No trace, no body, ... nothing. The other chromis never spoke a word of the missing one and went on as he never existed. Very Chuck Cunningham-like.

3 seems to be the happy number of my tank.

BellaCoop · Mar 19, 2018

Looks like I am going to lower them down from 6 too 3 and hopefully getting a CowFish in!

Deezill · Mar 19, 2018

NS Mike D said:
I had four when I started, one went missing very early on. No trace, no body, ... nothing. The other chromis never spoke a word of the missing one and went on as he never existed. Very Chuck Cunningham-like.

3 seems to be the happy number of my tank.

I know the feeling had one go missing never found any trace. I gave up looking. FYI the QT tank i had them in was only 29 gallon and I still could not find him. go figure.

Deezill · Mar 19, 2018

BellaCoop said:
Looks like I am going to lower them down from 6 too 3 and hopefully getting a CowFish in!

If you already have 6 in the tank two things could happen. You might get lucky and all six tolerate each other or one day you wake up and you don't have to lower your numbers they just disappear like mine seem to have done. Well let me take that back out of five I did find two or 3 at the bottom.

shred5 · Mar 19, 2018

Everyone I know can not keep them in groups. I have been lucky I bought 8 and still have 8, I have no idea why either. I bought them extremely small and they have to be close to two years now. They do fight all the time though. They are really aggressive even to other fish. Maybe one day they will kill each other.

BellaCoop · Mar 19, 2018

Chromis are just some savage fish it seems like haha

shred5 · Mar 19, 2018

BellaCoop said:
Chromis are just some savage fish it seems like haha

There damselfish, but they seriously aint as bad as some damselfish. I have been attacked several times diving by damselfish. Damselfish will take on large fish a chromis will not take on anything to much larger than they are.

NS Mike D · Mar 19, 2018

It always comes down to turf. One of mine is smaller than the other two. I was expecting the runt to be darwinned out. However they each have there own hiding place in the tank. They go in to the same spot at night, but even more importantly, when scared they dart in to their nooks in a flash. Clearly there is territorial ownership they don't display during the day when the swim about.

I suspect that of you don't have sufficient hiding places for each of them to call their own, nature has them make sure the school is thinned out. If you think about, they can't afford to be playing musical chairs when a predator shows up.

Salt1972 · Mar 19, 2018

We have 11 Green Chromis that are 3+ years old. One is from a previous purchase. He's about 3.5 inches. 10 more are about 1.5 inches. No aggression within the ranks or towards others. Model citizens.