Compatibility of Dottyback & Mandarin Goby

[sen5241b]

My royal dottyback ate my coral banded shrimp recently. He can be aggressive but my clown won't take crap from him. Anyone kept a dottyback & a mandarin goby together?

[GaryL]

My royal dottyback ate my coral banded shrimp recently. He can be aggressive but my clown won't take crap from him. Anyone kept a dottyback & a mandarin goby together?

 

if its a royal gramma then yes. not sure if i ever heard of a royal dottyback.

[sen5241b]

if its a royal gramma then yes. not sure if i ever heard of a royal dottyback.

 

Its the bi-color dottyback --front half purple --back half yellow. BTW, I have a pod pile --a pile of small pieces of white branch coral in which the pods can breed. A month after I put the pod pile in the tank the pods went crazy. I have to scape them off the glass.

[lancer99]

I don't have any personal experience with this pair, but from what I've read, Pseudochromis and Mandarins occupy totally different ecological niches. A Mandarin (passive bottom feeder) certainly wouldn't even notice a Pseudochromis, although a Pseudochromis (aggressive opportunistic feeder) will probably notice the pods....

 

It's worth a try, and if it doesn't work out, I'll take the Pseudochromis off your hands

 

-R

Edited September 5, 2008 by lancer99

[treesprite]

My understanding is that dottybacks should not be put with any less aggressive fish that stays low in the tank in rock niches, and that includes fish like mandarins. My dottyback lives in the holes in the bottom 1/4th of the liverock, which is typical of dottybacks. Dottybacks eat pods so it may be competition. My dottyback made snacks of the pepp shrimps I had, but the pepps terrorized the bta everytime I fed it, so they needed to go anyway.