Purple Tang Temperament

[Derek]

I am considering getting a small Purple Tang. I have heard that they can be aggressive but have never actually witnessed what constitutes a tang's aggressiveness. The majority of the fish in my tank are small. The only semi-large fish that I have are...

- Marine Betta

- Lamarck's Angel

- Yellow Eye Kole Tang

Are Purple Tangs aggressive?

[muddybluewater]

Mine runs my tank and was the last fish in. I would not say it is too mean but you can tell that the other fish know to not push things.

[Derek]

Mine runs my tank and was the last fish in. I would not say it is too mean but you can tell that the other fish know to not push things.

Sweet, none of my fish are overly dominate right now. I have a dottyback but she just stays in the rocks and pretty much keeps to herself. She is not a fan of gobies or wrasses, but if you aren't one of those she leaves you alone.

Definitely good to know. Thank you.

[cmanning]

The purple tang tends to be semi-aggressive towards its own kind: yellow tang, scopas tang, sailfin tang. Ours tried to pull a stunt like that on our juvenile sailfins tangs but our Dussumieri tang keeps in him inline, being a larger fish, it helps. Some hobbyists believe that if you're thinking about adding a purple tang.....to make sure is the last tang you add to the community.

-Cindy-

[Kkiel02]

I have mine with a powder brown, sailfin, blue hippo and used to have a kole tang. The kole tang would get beat up and it was larger than the purple. The purple only duels with my sailfin every so often but since the sailfin is bigger they are fine. All mine get along fairly good and are all in the 3-4 inch range except my blue hippo which was tiny when I got it and now is about 2 inches. I put them in blue hippo, sailfin and purple pretty much together. Then added the powder brown. I would recommend getting a smaller purple than your kole tang as the kole tangs can be fragile ime. These are in my 180 so they have a decent amount to swim and what not.

[offroadodge]

mine is fine with my other fish, but he gets pushy when he is hungry. Not to say everyone else wont eat but he tries to eat everything. Its weird, when he does that my sixline pokes him in the side.

[+mcallahan]

If you can, add the purple last.

Mine hates anything that looks like him. He killed my foxface, ran a copperband around the tank like the tank was a race track and even beat up on my Bengaii cardinal for a while. He's #1 in the tank, but he doesn't beat up on anyone now. He'll just quickly reminds them who is boss and lets it go.

[GKarshens]

I would worry that he will go after the Kole. Besides I feel 2 Tangs in a 90 would be overstocking anyway.

[Derek]

Thanks everyone. I will keep it in mind. I was thinking that a Purple Tang would bully the Kole Tang or the Kole Tang would bully the Purple Tang. It definitely would be the last fish I would be adding. I may be overstocked as it is, but I have been whittling down on a few fish.