Valentini Puffer Eating SPS

[brayden2980]

Hello, I have two fox face and one rabbit fish that demolish zoa colonies, and when introducing two Montipora (the first sps in the tank) my puffer went right at them. I am not happy to have another type of coral I can't have especially if it is all sps that I want to get more of. Are they known to eat Monti and is this hopefully the only form of SPS they go after?

 

[CasperOe]

Hello, I have two fox face and one rabbit fish that demolish zoa colonies, and when introducing two Montipora (the first sps in the tank) my puffer went right at them. I am not happy to have another type of coral I can't have especially if it is all sps that I want to get more of. Are they known to eat Monti and is this hopefully the only form of SPS they go after?

What "rabbit fish" apart from the fox face's do you have?

Some rabbit fish are not considered to be reef safe although your fox face should not be an issue (... i am not saying that they are not!).

The Valentini Puffer is not considered 100% reef safe, but it is one of the safer ones. They do sometimes bother small inverts, and may sometimes nip at some corals. It is rare for them to do any major damage, although seems you got yourself a naughty one on your hands there!

Are you making sure to keep your fish well fed? My feeding a good and varied diet and making sure there's always enough food you may deter some of the attention from your corals.

 

[Gill the 3rd]

Many types of puffers like to chew on corals. My valenti and blue spotted puffer occasionally nip at montis, digis and birdsnest, but its never enough to do any real damage and doesn't really affect the coral. They haven't touched any of my acros for some reason (knock on wood). My larger dogface would destroy any lps I had in the tank, but didn't touch any sps. I had to rehome him eventually.

I also keep them well fed and fat so maybe that also helps.

 

[brayden2980]

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What "rabbit fish" apart from the fox face's do you have?

Some rabbit fish are not considered to be reef safe although your fox face should not be an issue (... i am not saying that they are not!).

The Valentini Puffer is not considered 100% reef safe, but it is one of the safer ones. They do sometimes bother small inverts, and may sometimes nip at some corals. It is rare for them to do any major damage, although seems you got yourself a naughty one on your hands there!

Are you making sure to keep your fish well fed? My feeding a good and varied diet and making sure there's always enough food you may deter some of the attention from your corals.

I believe it is a gold spotted rabbit fish. He’s about 10 years old and huge.
Yeah the puffer seemed to nip at it a lot the first day and break off a piece but isn’t as eager today. Hopefully the montis recover.
I feed the tank twice daily frozen food and no fish have shrunken stomach so I believe they are fed enough.

 

[brayden2980]

Many types of puffers like to chew on corals. My valenti and blue spotted puffer occasionally nip at montis, digis and birdsnest, but its never enough to do any real damage and doesn't really affect the coral. They haven't touched any of my acros for some reason (knock on wood). My larger dogface would destroy any lps I had in the tank, but didn't touch any sps. I had to rehome him eventually.

I also keep them well fed and fat so maybe that also helps.

Thank you! Birds nest was the next one I was going to pick up. I’ll experiment with the new types of sps with the cheapest frags I can find and see what he’ll go after.