Originally posted by Lesleybird
I would like to tell the --- because I was going to add another type of small reef safe wrasse to the tank and did not want to place a couple of males together for fear they would be agressive toward each other. Any thoughts on this? Could smaller mean it is a female or a male? Lesley
In many cases, it won't matter. Females can be just as nasty if not moreso than males (clownfish come to mind). A lot of it comes down to territory and resources. If they are limited, then the --- of the individual may not matter. You can have two similar tangs for example- the --- of them does not matter- but similar color or body shape in too small a tank or population? Bam. They won't get along. If you have two totally different looking wrasses in a relatively large tank, there may not be any issue at all, even if they are both males. Aggressive issues between clearly different species tends to be related to territory and resources; between the same species it can be the same, and one of the resources may be females (or males). So the likelihood of aggression is tough to predict (in addition to being very difficult to distinguish sexes in many species).
The best bet is a large tank, dissimilar fish, lots of LR, taking precautions when introducing the new fish (rearranging rock, turning off lights)....and keeping it in a Q tank to allow it to destress after shipment of course.
