Mean Tang

I noticed today that my flame angelfish has some nip marks on his back fin and I assume it's from the tang and not the clown fish. I've checked charts and the flame angel and tang should get along but I know that isn't necessarily true in all cases.

Should I be worried about a possible escalation in the matter that could potentially result in death?

 

Sally Lightfoot may have stumbled on it during the night time

Steve

 

Yes, sounds like an aggression issue, that may stress the angel to the point of disease setting in or just plain old stress is enough to kill the fish.

What type of tang is this?

Guideline charts regarding combatability are just rough generalizations, fish are going to act differently in each situtation.

If you can post a picture of the fish that would help to make sure these were not injuries sustained from some other source like the rockwork.

 

also how large is the Tang, is there a big size difference?

 

and it can be the clown too i have had some mean ones

 

How long has the tang and angel been living together? How old are each of the fish? Have you recently aquascaped? My tangs are territorial at times. Some days they are very nice to each other and swim together all over the tank. If I move a couple rocks though they start to pick on each other for a couple days (I guess fighting over where they are going to sleep). They will also pick on new introductions to the tank for a couple days before being nice. Could the fish be stressed in any way? This could also trigger aggression.

 

The yellow tang was the first fish in the tank and I know it's territorial but not to this extent. I put the tang in on Sept. 26th and he was relatively small and has since grown but not more than 3". The flame angel was put in on Oct. 12th and the tang was a jerk right away, however, they're relatively the same size. I bought more rock and restructured about two weeks later to give them more hiding places and hopefully throw a curveball and give them new territory to claim.

I wasn't able to get a good picture before I left for work but there were a couple nips. The tail doesn't seem too bad then again I'm not exactly sure what too look for.

 

Are all the parameters good? This could cause aggression. They have been together long enough to become friends, mine were mean for about a month then played nice. Do you have any shrimp? Mine recently began fighting over the fire shrimp. I'm not sure if angels like being buds with shrimp but the tang may think it's trying to take it's shrimp. Other than that you may just have a mean fish. I have a few of those people in my family, lol.