Coral beauty with corals?

Miami Reef · Oct 20, 2019

I made a flame angel thread earlier asking if it’s safe to house it in a reef tank...

...but if I have to risk an angel in my tank, I’d want something that I find super attractive, I personally think the coral beauty is beautiful! I saw them at my lfs today and almost bought one, but wanted to ask here before I do that.

My tank is 300 gallons, I mainly have soft corals and a little bit of lps. I only have one sps and it’s a frag montipora.

Anyway, I know there’s is a risk with both options, but is coral beauty any safer than the flame angel? Do they like soft and lps corals a lot?

DSC reef · Oct 20, 2019

Any pygmy will be a risk but out of 3 coral beauty's, never had an issue. The coral beauty was a little aggressive but as for as corals go, no issues.

ScottB · Oct 20, 2019

I think it is hard to generalize and answer; it is down to the individual fish, the availability of other (grazing) food, and the type of softies on offer.

I have a Beauty and a Potters. Mostly SPS coral but the bottom is a lot of zoanthids. The established colonies they seem to ignore, but If I drop a new zoa frag of something in there they will hit it. Seem to have a taste for Rastas, Tubbs, and any other expensive zoas.

One thing I found that helps is to really scrub down the frag/colony with a toothbrush and a powerhead blast after dipping so that they enter the tank super clean and closed up. All the fish are going to poke around at it (tangs, wrasses, dwarfs) but there is not much to pick at and they lose interest.

If you can keep them "clean" with an occasional turkey basting, I find it helps; there is no detritus nourished algae bits to entice them.

Jesterrace · Oct 21, 2019

Miami Reef said:
I made a flame angel thread earlier asking if it’s safe to house it in a reef tank...

...but if I have to risk an angel in my tank, I’d want something that I find super attractive, I personally think the coral beauty is beautiful! I saw them at my lfs today and almost bought one, but wanted to ask here before I do that.

My tank is 300 gallons, I mainly have soft corals and a little bit of lps. I only have one sps and it’s a frag montipora.

Anyway, I know there’s is a risk with both options, but is coral beauty any safer than the flame angel? Do they like soft and lps corals a lot?

Honestly the CB and the Flame are about the same for risk and it is luck of the draw with them. As mentioned my tank is Euphyllia (LPS) dominant and other than the occasional peck at my green hammer (which it seems to be leaving alone now) it's left them alone. Also hasn't touched my little zoanthid polyps that I have. Get one small and introduce it to a tank with plenty of algae growing (they like to graze when they first start out) and then give it seaweed and a solid mixed diet (ie LRS Reef Frenzy) and that can help your odds of success.