Is Damsel eating new Acros?

[jazonPartij]

I just added my first acroporas in my 40gal cube. I dipped the corals before putting them in. My tank has been up and running for around 2 years. My damsel fish is picking at all of the new frags. I can’t tell if he’s eating the coral or trying to eat something on the coral. I didn’t think damsels would eat corals. He hasn’t touched any of the other corals until now. Any suggestions?

 

[leepink23]

Which damsel? I know the sapphire damsel eats flat worms, so could be eating things around it

 

[jazonPartij]

Which damsel? I know the sapphire damsel eats flat worms, so could be eating things around it

It’s a Gem Damsel

 

[jazonPartij]

Now half the frags are dead. Looks like just the ones he is obsessed with. I can’t tell if he’s actually eating the coral or the coral was going to die anyways so it was eating the dying pieces.

1.026
79 degrees
Calc 463
Mag 1280
Alk 9.0
PH 8.07

 

[Graffiti Spot]

We would need a close up of the corals. Hard to see what’s going on in that fts.

 

[jazonPartij]

We would need a close up of the corals. Hard to see what’s going on in that fts.

Not a great pic but best I could get

 

[jazonPartij]

We would need a close up of the corals. Hard to see what’s going on in that fts.

This one is better and shows the damsel doing his thing

 

[James M]

Same thing happened to me. Bought a frag and my damsel kept picking on it the first day I got it and the next morning it was completely dead

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Looks like the frag RTN'd. The damsel may be eating it cause it was dieing or may be eating something on it. Most damsels are 100% reef safe however there are some that certainly are not. I bought a Bowtie damsel at a LFS and it turned out to be a coral eater, eat and killed 2 large sps frags. It liked the ones with larger polyps, pink porci for example. I did some research and its a coral eater. Sad part was I bought a few corals at the same time as the damsel and the LFS did not know or did not care to tell me its not reef safe.

 

[leepink23]

This one is better and shows the damsel doing his thing

Definitely hard to know, this damsel is listed as reef safe but still anything can happen, could be eating something off of it, I would most likely remove just to be on the safe side.

 

[Backreefing]

I keep a dozen demsels because they are so reef safe . I only have one springeri demsel, but almost all demsels are pest eaters to some degree. You could net it out . Bahaha good luck. That will be like catching a mouse in a room full of junk .
by the way what are you nutrients like ?

 

[jazonPartij]

I keep a dozen demsels because they are so reef safe . I only have one springeri demsel, but almost all demsels are pest eaters to some degree. You could net it out . Bahaha good luck. That will be like catching a mouse in a room full of junk .
by the way what are you nutrients like ?

Phosphate at .03
Nitrate at 2ppm

 

[Nburg's Reef]

Sounds weird that a damsel would eat SPS tissue. I think it would be more likely something was eating the SPS (flat worms, red bugs,), or eating the dying SPS tissue (copepods, etc.) and the damsel was eating those.

Would you be able to turn your white LEDs up for pictures to see if you can get clearer pictures? most cameras are not good with blue spectrum.

 

[Ultra Aquatics]

I just got rid of a black velvet damsel, that I have had for 2 years, because he all of a sudden got a taste for zoas. Very strange as they are supposed to be completely reef safe...Every animal’s different though...

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

I have now had TWO damsels eat corals in the 2 years I've had my 360gallon tank.

One was Blue Velvet Damsel aka Japanese Damsel. (BEAUTIFUL fish) I caught him definitely eating my Raja rampage and suspect he was eating others as well. (I removed this and it lives in my refugium normally, but I often move it to my QT tank for a month before adding new fish to QT to cycle the tank.)

Today I saw holes of flesh eaten off of my Digital Brain coral. I'll post pic in a sec from my phone. I caught my Black and White striped, fat beautiful damsel eating it. I kept watching, he did it multiple times. I only saw 2 ripped off patches, then within a half hour I saw a third ripped off patch. The coral was healthier than ever and finally found its stride growing over the rock it was on.

I suspect he was eating my Xenia that my sister bought me for my birthday also. It was a huge beautiful pink/purple xenia colony with strongly pulsing hands/fingers. I thought it could be a chemistry thing, but now I am guessing it was him. I also notice my Daisy polyp rock has some empty patches which I'm now thinking is him too. (He is going to join the blue velvet as tank cycler/refugium jail fish)

I don't know why he decided to finally eat coral. He is very well fed and fat as ****. lol