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Experience with multiple Rabbitfishes?

robbyras

robbyras

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We have an established Foxface (named Hendrix) in our 135 gallon. He's about 7 inches and, while he mixes it up with the Convict Tang a bit, he's generally peaceful. We bought a Golden Lined Rabbitfish (the wife has named him Harvey) from Biota because we thought he was cool looking, but frankly he was kind of an impulse buy. That said, he's pretty cool and we want to keep him. I could swear I did some research to see if he'd get along with our Foxface and saw that they would be fine, but now the research says they will likely fight the the bloody death.

Harvey currently in our 20-gallon frag tank (with 2 naked clowns and 1 blue-green chromis) and doing great, but he's going to need to me moved to the display tank soon. He's a little less than 3 inches in length.

I'm starting to feel like I painted myself into a corner here. I'm considering putting him in display with the foxface and see what happens. I'm also considering trying to re-home the foxface. Ultimately I know either fish will outgrow the 130 gallon, so I'm kind of at a loss on what to do.

Any thoughts?
 
My experience is the biota one will very quickly outgrow that first tank, and probably quickly outgrow the second. They grow fast and you'd likely need to re-home eventually either way.

Easier to re-home when small.
 
I have a one spot foxface. About a year ago I brought home a yellow mimic tang. The foxface almost killed him in about 20 minutes. Poor guy was in a bottom corner all chewed up. Had to take him out and rehome him. Passed him on to another BAR member and he recovered.

I currently have a gem tang and purple tang. The foxface went into the SHU for about 6 months (a 60g) then was reintroduced. So far no issues. That is my experience with the foxface. Still the coolest looking fish in the tank.
 
Foxface and doliatus without issue for over 7 years
2 years ago I was gifted another foxface.
Fortunately it was not the same sex as the existing one and they get along like a pair
Unfortunately there is more harassing behavior from the original foxface towars the doliatus

These fish are in a 300
7” and 9” foxfaces
10” doiliatus

The amount, quality, and variety of food and frequency will aid your success
 
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Update on this. We decided to put the little GL Rabbitfish in the tank and see what happens. And... nothing happened.... the Gem Tang chased him around for a day and that was it. The Foxface is like 3x's the size of the GL and he doesn't seem to care.

I know this little experiment will come to an end sooner than later, but we really like Harvey (GL Rabbitfish) and he's fit in nicely so far.


IMG_6804.png
 
Had this trio for a few years..When one of the fox face got to 6-7 he started fighting with the gold spot who was the same size.. Had to rehome the larger foxface.. Now gold spot is bigger and starting to pick on the remaining fox face.. Love the rabbit fish just seems as they get big some have issues but not all..
 

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PjFish said:
Had this trio for a few years..When one of the fox face got to 6-7 he started fighting with the gold spot who was the same size.. Had to rehome the larger foxface.. Now gold spot is bigger and starting to pick on the remaining fox face.. Love the rabbit fish just seems as they get big some have issues but not all..
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Great photo of the gold spot! Thanks for sharing your experience. This is pretty much how I expect ours to go.

Our FF is about 7 inches and the Gold Lined is about 3.5, so they don't seem to care about each other at all. I assume that will change as the gold lined gets bigger. We're gonna ride it out for now since we really like both fish. We'll have to rehome the GL in a year or so I imagine, but we'll deal with that as it comes.
 
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