you are MUCH better off with a single male or female. It can work but it might not. 3 things can happen a) it works b) the males will chase the females (which is another reason not to do it. the tank is just not big enough to do the kind of retreating that needs to be done). with one female it will take all the brunt of the male. with multiple females he so busy trying to control them all no one female gets the brunt of it (the females themselves BARELY tolerate each other another, the main reason they need space). I dont want to imply they are aggressive with each other all the time but during feeding and occasionally there is chasing going on. and the last thing that can happen with a male and a female is you get a bold female that will fight the male and then you will eventually end up with two males who will fight till ones dead in a 75g. Two of the three females I had were very bold and thus never RAN from the male. they were just barely submissive enough to circle around quickly never actually moving from the general space where they were. In fact to make it work well you need ALL of them to be bold enough to not allow too much of a beating from the others. thats done by basically buying them all the same size at the same time (with the male slightly bigger). Any individual too weak wont make it.
As far as aggression to other fish, they ignore almost everything except other anthias in which case they can and will whip most of them in close quarters. The arent punks BUT if you have any fish that are going to pick on them upon indroduction dont even bother, they'll never eat or settle in. I took my tangs out for two weeks when I got mine. Once established they arent exactly punks. My male in particular had no problem running my midas blenny into his hole when neccessary (midas blennies get pissy). basically EVERYTHING works better in large quarters with them and anything under 6ft with more than one is risking it not working. they take to eating alot better in groups too (monkey see monkey do. it can be the difference between pigs and taking two weeks to get eating regularly).
a few pics
all four are in there just not out and about
. The reef crashed while we were on vacation.... seems the whole 3 weeks we were gone it was receiving tap top-offs. My tap TDS is over 600 and loaded with chloramines. She has a Janss pipefish as a tankmate right now but she use to be with a mandarin, leopard wrasse, the Janss and a foxface.
