jaganshi066
Valuable Member
Same ive kept three dwarfs that have never nipped coral
General Reef Safe "With Caution" Thread
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polyppal
2500 Club Member
Incorrect. There are plenty of fish with no appetite for eating corals or your CUC. Your never gonna see nemo chewing on an acro or a lawnmower blenny eating your crabs... Usually the fish in question are carnivores or omnivores.
jaganshi066
Valuable Member
I never said that, you insinuated all reef safe with caution means not reef safe, people have different experiences just like they do with “reef safe” fish. A lot of it has to do with the care and I’m sure there’s more factors. Like people who feed more tend to see less nipping
polyppal
2500 Club Member
lol, I literally quoted what you said - that "that’s any fish though even the ones that say reef safe, so rswc, or if it says reef safe doesn’t matter if that’s the case"
No, that's not "any fish though". A carnivorous fish is not inherently "reef safe" because... it's a carnivore. Many have a natural affinity to eat things, like corals and inverts that herbivores and certain omnivores simply dont eat. Sure you can feed it a particular way and hope it doesn't go after your inhabitants, but unless you can change its biology, you cant change the fact that it's a predator and it may chose to do predatory things later, even if its not doing them now. That's the factual experience of thousands of people in this hobby not my opinion.
Doesn't mean you cant put a RSWC fish in your tank - I never said that (and you seem to be the only one in this old thread that didn't comprehend what I was stating). It means that it is not "Reef Safe" in that there is a risk of keeping it with invertebrates.
jaganshi066
Valuable Member
Is there a risk keeping reef safe with invertebrates?
jaganshi066
Valuable Member
Guess there isn’t
danieyella
unfriendly local swamp witch
My filefish now lives in the sump, he developed an appetite for my zoas and RFAs after polishing off all the aiptasia.
My canary wrasse (also "reef safe with caution") is a model citizen and the only thing he inhales that I don't want him eating is berghia nudis. My marine betta eats some of the smaller inverts (peppermint shrimp are game, but the cleaner shrimp is left alone).
My canary wrasse (also "reef safe with caution") is a model citizen and the only thing he inhales that I don't want him eating is berghia nudis. My marine betta eats some of the smaller inverts (peppermint shrimp are game, but the cleaner shrimp is left alone).
Vette67
Reefing since 1997
Along those lines, I had a morpho tang that decimated an elegance coral. It seems to be based on the individual fish and their unique personality. Nobody would ever suggest a morpho tang is not reef safe, but I am not the only one with this experience with this kind of fish. Sometimes even reef safe fish go rogue. There are very few absolutes in this hobby. One person may have a great flame angel, and the next one is a zoa killer. Luck of the draw, I think.
jaganshi066
Valuable Member
Great way to put things together gays what I’ve been saying. I’ve heard so many stories of blue tangs eating corals when they are supposedly reef safe. Truth is nobody knows the full extent of what they eat in the wild
rhostam
Well-Known Member
I'm still learning my way around the hobby, but I won't buy anything that says "RSWC." Instead, I write down or memorize the name of the specimen and look it up when I get home. It's hard to control those impulses and it is sad that LFS doesn't seem to care.
mikeg18
Community Member
Had both a flame and potters angel in my 100gal reef from 2000-2007. Model citizens until I lost the tank due to a power outage. Had a beautiful mitratus butterfly in my reef a few years back. Never saw a polyp again. Corals looked fine. Just no polyp extension.
Bizzie
Community Member
I hate how my favorite fish are Reef Safe "With Caution" but hate the heavy decision to either return the fish you have grown to love, curb the habits of nipping or watch a coral die. I would love to have an open discussion of very tough decisions you have made for either coral health or fish love. I don't have a complete understanding on why then nip at one species of coral over another and why fish with a long history of being an upstanding citizen suddenly goes on a feeding frenzy. For example my Valentini Puffer ate a whole acan about a month after I added him. I was deeply saddened at the time but only had the basic toadstools and gsp along with it and decided to keep him until I wanted a nicer coral. Today he is an upstanding reef citizen and hasn't killed anything in the last 6 months (even acans which I now love).... except every snail, hermit and maybe a light nip at anything new added. Its damage and replacement I am currently willing to accept.
Now I am faced with a similar dilemma after adding one of my favorite fish, a CB Aiptasia-eating filefish and about 24 hours later he ate a polyp of my favorite leather. Its a shame these fish are a dice roll and any hungry fish often gets passed from owner to owner until a accepting owner or death. I am going to watch it play out for now but would love to hear any sad stories, comeback kid stories and accepted risks or limits on what you can put in your tank.
Any advice on reducing nipping habits for specific fish would be great. My puffer stopped taste testing corals once I regularly started giving him frozen clams and replenish the dwarf ceriths he snacks on. He is great until I stop my heavy feeding habits.
Pictures welcome. Here is the tiny leaf dude
I have fallen prey to the rswc for invertebrates. Seems like most of the fish I prefer also prefer invertebrates.
I have several angels, for me it is fish first corals 2nd... knowing that going in I may (probably will) have issues with some corals and I realize that going in. I focus on minimizing coral loss keeping them healthy and happy and removing the teasers...
They seem to avoid all heathy corals/SPS but are all over anything that may struggle..
just my observation
They seem to avoid all heathy corals/SPS but are all over anything that may struggle..
just my observation
Bizzie
Community Member
Before I make a mistake of a fish wish list purchase, anyone familiar with the Japanese swallow angel fish? From what I’ve read, it appears to be reef safe.I bought a majestic angel a long time ago. It was a juvenile, still with the juvenile coloring. I had it for about 5 years, and it was a model reef citizen. Then once it got pretty big, closer to 5 or 6 inches in length, it acquired a taste for coral. Nothing changed in my tank, it was still well fed, as it had been for years, but one day it turned. I don't know if it was a part of growing up, but as much as it pained me, I had to rehome it. That was a cool fish in a reef, until it wasn't.. But the majestic angel, like most angels, is probably just not reef safe. You'll have to accept some amount of nipping, which will probably upset most corals, if you put one in a reef. But the majestic was supposedly the most reef safe angel, and mine definitely was for a while. Not the best picture....
I too have 3 dwarf angels flame back; lemon peel and flame all get along fine and with corals except the lemon peel will go after a green lobo with a vengeance. The lobo is now in my sump and doing great.
I forgot to add that I feed 2-3 times/day
jaganshi066
Valuable Member
I heard lemonpeels are probably the most notorious of the dwarf angels for eating corals haha. My flameback is a little aggressive, how’s yours?
jaganshi066
Valuable Member
Trying to tell the other guy but he seems really hurt lol. I heard wrasses do attack snails and sometimes even crabs
