Neon dottyback

[David]

I picked up a neon dottyback this past Friday. It has been behaving pretty good, except to my nasarius snails, that it harasses. It doesn’t bother the other snails, although i have seen it eyeballing them. The only shrimp I have is a tiger pistol who is as big as the dottyback and is protected by a watchman goby. I shouldn’t have bought it, but I may have gotten lucky with a fairly mild manored individual. It’s a delightful fish, that moves in and out of rock crevices like a mini eel. I hope it works out long term.

 

[Trio91]

Best of luck, I had one beat the heck put of a platinum clown a while back. I had to remove an entire rock to get it outta my tank

 

[Jeremy Brito]

I have owned a few dotty backs but I have not had any issues with them picking on shrimp.

To be honest I am know expert on dotty back behavior but what I can say is fish like this will eventually settle into a section of the tank and mostly venture in that area as the holes they pick to live in are for safety an retreat meaning they prefer to have a quick escape route to familiar territory prehaps when it gets more established in the tanks pecking order it'll calm down as for your snails.. If its in,a fishes nature to pick at snails its not gonna change unless its satisfied with another food source

 

[David]

Yea I realized I was going to here some horror stories. Hasn’t even given the ocelaris clowns a second look so far. Yes if I ever have to get it out it’s going require pulling all the rocks.

 

[Labridaedicted]

Added one to my very first tank back in the day. It unintentionally ended up being a species tank because he did not play nicely with others. I got rid of him in that next upgrade. He took down wrasses, gobies, blennies, and even a dwarf angel of all things until I realized he just wasn't going to have it.

I never saw mine pick on inverts, though, so you should be safe in that regard.

Edit: how big is the tank? That goes a long way in determining just how aggressive they'll be. I've found them to be absolute terrors in tanks less than 30 gallons.

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[BangedUp]

I picked up a neon dottyback this past Friday. It has been behaving pretty good, except to my nasarius snails, that it harasses. It doesn’t bother the other snails, although i have seen it eyeballing them. The only shrimp I have is a tiger pistol who is as big as the dottyback and is protected by a watchman goby. I shouldn’t have bought it, but I may have gotten lucky with a fairly mild manored individual. It’s a delightful fish, that moves in and out of rock crevices like a mini eel. I hope it works out long term.

Mine left my snails alone after a few days

 

[David]

10 gal for now. Going to make a bigger tank soon.

 

[Jeremy Brito]

I never realised they were that I guess I was lucky when I added my neon back in the day he never bothered anyone he unfortunately got spooked one day and darted straight into a anemone and well ... You guys know the rest. I had concidered adding one to my new tank but idk about that now

 

[David]

Neon dottyback is still doing fine. Not bothering anyone in the 10 gallon nano. I’m pretty lucky. He’s might have stopped bothering the snails. I haven’t seen it bothering them in a few days at least. He will be moving to my new 40 gallon that I bought yesterday @ the $ per gallon sale. Going to have to drill it and cycle it, so it will be a little while. I will get into the details on the new tank in a different thread.

 

[MarkMcG]

We had to find ours a new home. It would nip at the clam, small shrimp and any snails that happened to be turned over. No problem with other fish. Shame because it was beautiful and curious.

 

[David]

Mine turns snails over too. I guess i shouldnt try a clam as long as I have it. I hope I can do a shrimp or 2 in the bigger tank, that’s almost done cycling. I’ll see how that goes.