Tang aggression

[Luis1992]

Hello all. I recently got a large tang that has become territorial and aggressive. He’s only been in the tank about 2 weeks. I recently tried adding some other fish but he becomes aggressive no matter the type of fish (blonde tang, trigger, angel). I am going to move him to another tank until I have the current fish I want it the tank. How long will he need to be out of my main dt for the aggression to subside. I was thinking a month but would like advice.

 

[DipG]

How big (dimensions) is your tank? And what kind of tang did you add?

 

[Glott3133]

My sailfin definitely bullies any new fish and some of the existing ones. I'm not sure if she is the culprit for some of my fish dying, but I do see her hitting them with her spike.

 

[Luis1992]

Tank is 140g. 2’ x 2’ x 5’. Aggressive tang is a large scopas tang

 

[DipG]

Scopas generally will be aggressive towards their own kind i.e. zebrasoma. So I am a bit surprised that it would be aggressive towards other fish. Also you are bit on a smaller size as far as tank goes for multiple tangs. Make sure there is enough space to hide within your tank . You can try rearranging some rock work, sometimes that helps. Mirror trick works sometimes too. Feeding some extra nori sheets attached to multiple rocks sometime helps. The last resort should be taking the tang out and moving it to different tank. That works 50% of time. Move it to a different tank for at least a month which will allow new fish in your tank to adjust and hopefully when the scopas is reintroduced they can handle the bullying if it continues.
In larger tanks little bit of tang aggression is normal from time to time if you have multiple tangs from same genus