Tang vs goby

[fish-brother]

I have a kole's tang and an engineer goby in my 92 gallon corner.
The tang was the third addition to the tank and then a few weeks later i added an enginer goby. everything was fine for a while and then everytime the goby came out the tang hit him with his tail, this behavior has continued for 2 months now and the goby only comes out at night now, and rarely is seen during the day. how do i stop this, or is it normal?

[icereefer]

normally the kole's tangs, is not a overly aggressive fish. but it sounds like he's the boss of the tank.
if you haven't tried moving some of your rock around to throw off his teritorial mod, try that.
Jim

[Brock Fluharty]

All tangs have a scapel-like "bone" protruding from the base of where the tail connects to the body, giving them their common name, "Surgeonfish".That is what the little white dot is on his tail. If he hit the goby with it, it could cut him severly, and even kill kim. I would watch that goby, and if this behavior continues, you may have to separate them.


Brock

[Mongoose]

How often do you feed your Kole Tang, tang aggression can be minimized with a full belly. That is an odd fish for him to have a problem with, its possiable that he sees the goby as a fish that would (in the ocean) complete for the same food source (macroalge) however I don't think this is the case.

[Ocean Singer]

yeah, very odd, I agree with icereefer, switch around his rocks, but, it also is a natural thing for tangs to nip at other fish, and like brock said, that bone thing is very sharp, I got poked by one when examining a dead yellow tang in science, and it drew blood