Corals - I am ready to throw in the towel!!!

[Coleus]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Sorry to hear Rick. I'm afraid with your fish vs corals situation you are screwed. I know a lot of people suggest to the contrary but I believe that you cannot compensate for bad feeding behaviours by feeding heavy. Once they learn that something is "food", they will never unlearn it. I'm afraid you might have a choice to make in this regard.

To be honest your coral issues sound eerily similar to my own and I'm now of the belief that my fish are responsible for a lot of damage that I don't necessarily see them do. I think they do a lot when we're not looking. Besides my two butterflies (whom I know damage a lot) I'm no longer 100% trusting of my potter's angel or my rabbitfish. Every now and again I see them take little nips at my remaining gorgs.. You have the same rabbitfish .. I dunno - maybe there's something there that needs to be examined a little closer.

got to agree with whatever Tony just said. I never seen my angels pick on my corals but i know they do when i am not looking. Once the fish like the taste of corals, not sure how you can revert that.

[kien]

Ya I would also agree that they probably do a lot of damage or just simply irritate corals while we are not looking. I used to have a flame angel in my mixed reef that I swore was reef safe. Never saw him do anything to make me think otherwise. Then one day I decided to put him into the aggressive tank instead to make room for new fish. Wow, what a difference that made. All of a sudden I had insane polyp extension. I really didn't know what I was missing.