Successfully keeping a humuhumu trigger in a reef tank

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

I started a thread about keeping clown triggers in a reef tank a few days ago. Today I'm wondering about keeping humhumu triggers in a reef tank. Who's done it? What things should someone attempting this be aware of? What are the keys to success?

 

[Reefer Matt Verified Media Partner]

I have had one for a few years now in a fowlr tank. His name is Bandit, and he likes to steal everyone's food. He eats everything, even nori. I wouldn't put this fish in a reef tank, as every shrimp, snail, and invertebrate will get eaten. They make a cool chomping noise too.

 

[bobnicaragua]

I kept clown and huma huma trigers in a Fowler tank back in the 90s. Unless you’d enjoy watching them kill every shrimp, snail, small fish, and crab in your reef, I would advise against it.

How about a nice damsel fish?

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

For sure. Definitely understand that they're not good candidates with inverts. I'm not fond of shrimp or crabs anyhow, so not a big sacrifice there. The small fish issue might be a problem though.

 

[Daniel@R2R Verified Admin]

I have had one for a few years now in a fowlr tank. His name is Bandit, and he likes to steal everyone's food. He eats everything, even nori. I wouldn't put this fish in a reef tank, as every shrimp, snail, and invertebrate will get eaten. They make a cool chomping noise too.

Beautiful fish!

 

[Reefer Matt Verified Media Partner]

Beautiful fish!

Thanks! He's a lil butthead though.
But definitely lends character to the tank.

 

[Enderg60]

Triggers are perfectly reef safe.

They are just not invert safe.

 

[BirdFish5000]

I misread that as 'hamburger'

 

[00W]

Mine has eaten all my Kenya trees and most of my snails.
Hasn't touched any GSP or zoas.
Don't have any other coral in there and personally wouldn't try any more.
Beautiful fish with a great personality.
He's getting a bit more sure of himself as he gets bigger and older and I stick my hand in the tank less and less.
His teeth are quite sharp.
The one thing about triggers are they just move everything around and eat rocks, snail shells etc so they will tip corals right over.
They are eating machines. They get bored easily. I keep small rocks on the bottom and he moves them around constantly.

 

[Dbichler]

Mine will not touch any soft corals but does eat small snails. Big turbo snails fighting conchs all safe as they have too thick of shells. He will eat anything I feed him and will eat small fish if he can catch it he will eat it.

 

[Missquoted1]

I started a thread about keeping clown triggers in a reef tank a few days ago. Today I'm wondering about keeping humhumu triggers in a reef tank. Who's done it? What things should someone attempting this be aware of? What are the keys to success?

We added both a juvenile humuhumu and unicorn tang 4 years ago to our 60-gallon tank. Both seemed to get along with the other tank mates: a yellow tang, kole tang, and a pair of clowns. Fast forward to the start of 2023 and a dead unicorn tang. The trigger had become larger and more aggressive- we feel that he was ultimately responsible for killing the unicorn (and all our inverts). Our remaining fish seem to be okay but we're debating rehoming him as we'd like to upgrade our tank and grow corals.

Best of luck to you.