[hrdneglcry]

I'm keeping Niger Triggers, and a Picasso Trigger together. I want to add a Clown Trigger, but I do not want him to kill the Picasso, or any of my Niger's. The tank is 120 gallons. Hopefully I will get some warning before they attack to kill. Is anybody else keeping multiple Triggerfish in the same tank?

[Reefland]

I think it can easily be done in larger tanks, unfortunately probably larger than your 120. I also see in the other thread where you have a Poweder Blue Tang; along with these other, capable of growing large, fish you might be looking at some over crowding issues.

[hrdneglcry]

I have a 180 gallon that might be conveted to salt one day. I think that the fish at their present size will be OK in the 120 for maybe 9 months.

[Huma Huma65651]

A 120 gallon i a little small. If you want to try, try at least a 150 gallon.

[dabossinokc]

I have a 150 6 ft and I have a Huma and Clown together and they don't bother each other at all, but I do believe that with triggers it all depends on their personalities. I would suggest having a lot of room to hide, What I think works best is two rocks on top of each other that presents an area where they can lock their lower and upper fins into at night. This will greatly reduce the stress on them and make them a bit less pissed off during the day. My clown loves that. Just a suggestion

[hrdneglcry]

OK for the record even though this post is so old......I had 14 Triggers in my 180. I had 7 Nigers, a Black Hawaiian, 2 Picassos, 2 Bursa, an Undulate, and a Clown.
Things went well for quite a while. I gave them plenty of hiding places in honeycomb rock, and live rock. I fed them at least three times a day because I am home all day. In fact I fed them whenever they asked for it. I did this to cut down on aggression.
Now eventually many of these fish would have to be moved as their adult size would not allow them to stay together.
The biggest problem for me when keeping multiple Triggers was this.....there is going to be aggression no matter how hard I work. But that is not the problem. The problem is that it is impossible to catch a beaten up Trigger in a tank that has tons of hiding places for Triggers. The tank always had to be torn up to catch the beat up ones. The beat up ones would be caught, and put in another tank to heal, then reintroduced, or not, if the problem persisted.
But I had to spend a lot of time setting the tank up, so that each Trigger had many good holes to choose from.
They all actually did quite well. The was not much time for them to fight as there were so many in there.
The main thing was the rock work. It is difficult to (time after time) re-setup the rock work after catching damaged Triggers.
And even though I was able to do that, in the end I ran into trouble when I cut down on feeding time.
I do not recommend doing what I did (keeping so many Triggers). I did not lose barely any Triggers to aggression. I sold them off. My goal could have worked though. My goal was to let the Triggers decide who would stay, and who would go. What I mean is that I would have sold off the ones getting beat up until I was left with a tank that did not beat each other up. (Hopefully more than one Trigger)
I love Triggers.
I currently own one Tess Eel, One Snowflake Eel, and an Assasi Trigger. When I wrote this post originally I had a lot more fish. I also had two 120 gallon aquariums, a 100 gallon, a 60 gallon, a 30 gallon, and a 23 gallon.
Now I have a 180 gallon, and a 120 gallon.

[hrdneglcry]

For anybody interested I will put a link in here for a short video of mine on YouTube that shows my many triggers eating. At the time of this video I had 8 Niger Triggers, an Undulate Trigger, a Picasso Trigger, and a Clown Trigger. All can be seen in the short video.
YouTube - Grouper, and a pack of Triggers

[leebca]

I would like to further understand what you mean when you wrote:

Originally Posted by hrdneglcry

I did not lose barely any Triggers to aggression.

How many triggerfishes died since you began keeping so many? How many did you actually have to catch because they were 'beaten up?'

Thanks!

[hrdneglcry]

I'd rather not talk about. I am no longer doing it, so it is not fresh in my mind, and i don't feel like thinking back to all of the hard work. It did not work, but I know why. No use rehashing it for me.

[hrdneglcry]

Well, I thought about it. I lost only one directly to tank aggression. When I first posted this thread I had the Triggers in a 120, and I had to spread the 8 of them out between two 120's. Then in one tank one was getting beaten on, so it had to be permanently moved to a 100. But they all lived. Then I sold off my 120's, and 100, and put all of the Triggers together in a 180. I fed them all day everyday. I have huge Dardanus Megistos (Large hairy hermit crabs) to clean up the Triggers' messy eating.

[dabossinokc]

What kind of filtration did you have set up on the tank? I have a problem with nitrite spikes sometimes. I am running bio-balls and a protein skimmer which I am considering changed to LR rubble. Thoughts? My tank is 150 and my sump is 20 gallon.

[Reefland]

I would definitely get rid of the bio-media, but I wouldn't replace it with anything. Remove it slowly...over the course of a few weeks.

[hrdneglcry]

I have a Skylab Industries SL-20 wet/dry with two Ocean Clear, Red Sea Canister filters, and two Aquaclear 500's. The Ocean Clear Filters (Model 320 & 325) work inline with each other, and I have them running in my sump. My wet/dry removes more waste from my quarium than any other filter. So the sludge used to build up, and I had to clean at least every two weeks. I had the Canister filters hooked up inside of the tank, but they were not removing any waste, so I hooked them up inside the sump of the wet/dry, and they keep the wet/dry spotless. Then I only have to clean the Ocean Clear's every once in a while. I have not had any problem with Nitrate, or Nitrite spikes from my wet/dry. I have heard warnings about it though, but I was told if I did not have a problem let it go. Plus I try to do water changes on a weekly basis as almost every saltwater creature that I own is a predator. My Horse Conch eats Mexican Turbo Snails, and he will grow to 24" in the wild.

[dabossinokc]

So you are saying with 260 lbs of LR in my tank and a 150 tank to completely remove the bio balls overtime? Like how much at a time? What would support the bacteria other than the rock? Should I keep a deep sand bed? Say 4 inches?

[almostdiva]

Remove it in thirds or so, wait about 3 weeks in between removing each third (letting your biological filter stabilize and "catch up" to itself). I would not recommend that you add any new livestock while you're doing this, either. Wait until the process is complete. Up to you if you want to have sand or not. I do, and I love it, but some people don't.

Rebecca