[mattreefer]

hey guys and gals me again ive just been to my lfs and bought a strawberry gramma (Pseudochromis poryphyreus) and hes only bout an inch big hes been in there now for bout an hour and ive had to put him in a small breeding box with some small bits of rock for comfort as my six line wrasse(Pseudocheilinus hexataenia0 keeps fighting with him.
the six line is really going for him and the once perfect strwberry gramma now has marks on him. will the fighting cease or will i have to find another home for him? and will the fighting ease when the strawberry is bigger? the six line is about 2 inches. they are in a reef tank cheers

[Ninong]

I don't think you will be able to keep the purple dottyback in the same tank with the 6-line wrasse unless you have a large tank -- at least 180 gallons (676 liters).

I have an orchid dottyback (Pseudochromis fridmani) in a 120-gal tank with two Cirrhilabrus spp. wrasses but the fairy wrasses are known for being mild-mannered and they are much, much larger than the dottyback. Besides, the orchid dottyback is probably the least aggressive of the Pseudochromids. The purple dottyback, on the other hand, is one of the most aggressive but that's not your problem at the moment because yours is smaller than your 6-line. The 6-line can be an extremely aggressive wrasse towards certain other fish that it knows will compete with it for the same food items. Six-lines have been known to eat the eyes out of Mandarinfish so that they can't see to hunt copepods. If your purple dottyback were full grown, it would probably make quick work of the 6-line. What you have at the moment is the realization of the part of the 6-line that it needs to finish off the dottyback while it's still small.

P.S. -- The purple dottyback, aka the strawberry dottyback, aka the magenta dottyback is now classified as Pictichromis porphyrea. Its former scientific name was Pseudochromis porphyreus.

[mattreefer]

thanks for the info ive got the strawberry in a small breeding floating tank to fat it up maybe i can pass the sixline on to a mate i know if he wants it cheers guys

[lurker]

Deja VUE !!
Same fish , same size , same result !!!
I have a 72 bow , the wrasse was established when I got the "purple dude".
The wrasse beat him silly
I bought 1 of those tiny lil breeder floater tanks to isolate him and stuck him in it. The wrasse kept coming up to the tank doing a vertical fighting dance. I went to bed , He was fine in the morning , still in his breeder tank when I left for work. After work spent like $120 on a complete 6 gal eclipse setup for him but when I got home , the breeder was on the bottom with one of my huge turbo snails on it and no sign of purple dude . I figured he was crab food.
Next day I got a phone call from my girlfriend purple dude was swimming around happily but she couldnt catch him . When I got home there he was , doin the dottyback dance. This was 5 months ago , so a blue damsel inherited the nano and the wrasse went back to dive bombing the bubble coral and scaring my 2 firefish. The purple dude and the wrasse do not bother each other at all , even swim together at feeding time.
The really crappy thing , I try to research my tank purchases as best I can , and I never found a site that said the 2 wouldnt get along .
CS