So I've been feeling guilty lately and finally decided to ask others their opinions. Basically I have a somewhat ethical dilemma with the fish in my FOWLR tank. As most of you know my King angel is pretty (to very) mean towards other fish. However she is my dream fish she is healthy she survived the marine velvet and I can't imagine ever giving her up which leads me to my dilemma.
My king angel is and has been picking on my foxface and my emperor angel. My foxface is somewhat ballsy and always swims out in the open knowing that by doing so, every now and then, my king angel will nip at his fins. So it isn't all the time but it's certainly enough of the time that my foxface has a fairly nipped up tail
As for my emperor he's not allowed to come out and swim in the open....pretty much ever....he basically has a spot at the back of the tank where he's safe and the king angel wont bite him. The only time the emperor comes out is when I feed the tank. At that time the king is distracted by the food so she doesn't notice that the emperor has come out, so the emperor has a few minutes to swim out in the open and eat then it's back to his hiding spot. As soon as the king notices the emperor move out from his hiding spot she chases him right back in. As long as he stays there he's safe, if he tries to come out he gets nipped, so he's pretty much learned to just stay put.
Now if I'm being honest with myself I know that this is not a great life for these fish
, but the thought of re-homing them makes me sad because I care for them and (maybe it's selfish) but I don't want to give them up
Then there's the excuses: What if I re-home them and they're not any better off; What if they die in someone else's tank; The emperor was mean to the fish in the guys tank that I got him from, what if he's mean to the new tanks fish; If they're gone from the tank will the king angel then just pick on one of the other fish, even though she doesn't pick on them now? *sigh*
Then there's the thought: Wouldn't it be nice for the foxface to be able to swim around and not get nipped at, and for the emperor to be able to enjoy swimming around open and freely. *sigh*
I'm torn as to what to do, basically my heart is saying one thing and my head another. The foxface would have to be re-homed as we already have another foxface (magnificent) in the reef tank and I don't want to chance any fighting. I've also half thought about the emperor going into the reef tank but since he picked on small fish in the tank I got him from (and I have mostly small fish in the reef) I'm not so sure about that. I also have zoos that he might find tasty and it would suck if he ate them. Plus the reef tank already has a fair amount of fish in it, so that's something to keep in mind. I could swap out the pink tail trigger (he swims into the net when I feed my eel so he'd be easy to catch) and emperor but the trigger is doing well in the reef and I'd hate for him to go into the fowlr and have the king pick on him, however the king leaves the bursa trigger alone so maybe he wouldn't pick on the pink tail, but then who knows? and what if the pink tail started picking on the bursa.....AHHHHHH!!!!!! Too much over thinking!!!!! Also if I put the emperor in the reef it would be extremely hard to get him back out, so if problems occurred after the fact I'd be somewhat SOL.
So everyone if you were me WHAT WOULD YOU DO!?! Please Help!