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

[Douglas]

What's that other saying..."there are plenty other fish in the sea". Catch her, and trade her in for a new model. (maybe two twenty year olds). Thearapy maybe?

[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.

[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.

[spawn]

It can't be that bad. Just lose the blue-ser.

[globaldesigns]

Originally Posted by Coleus

maybe you can then train her to eat some apitasia too :-) That would be some thing

She is about 6-7 inches in length, as Grizz said very beautiful fish... I also thought the same thing about the aptasia. i do have quite a bit of aptasia in the sump, but the nudis are taking care of them. Found some nudi eggs and now see some little babies.

I don't see any aptasia in the DT, so maybe she is eating those also.

But it is frustrating, as I have alot of nice colorful zoas. I can't catch her, so oh well I guess.

[globaldesigns]

Originally Posted by zoaElite

Maybe it's time to push the restart button?

Why not sell off pretty much everything you have, change out some of the LR, do a massive water change and remove the pellet reactors?

Nope, not going to do it.

Worst case, will just let all coral die and have a fowler. Fish are doing great and I like my aquascaping.

SPS die off seems to settling down, and most SPS are now showing signs of growth with alot of white tipped growth... It is just frustrating when you seem to have one thing covered, then something else happens.

What happened to blue tangs being reef safe! Damn it!

[globaldesigns]

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.

Great advice Tony, but I also thought of that. I even took some coral to Red Coral to investigate that maybe I have bugs, critters, crabs, fish that may be eating things. But under the magnifyer, there are no signs of any of the above.

With the SPS issues, you have to be here to see it. When things died it wasn't over a longer period of time. For example a SPS coral I had for over 2 years, just suddenly started losing flesh. I took it to Red Coral, we investigated and fragged what was left. By the time I got home, the frag lost half or more of the remaining flesh, and within an hour in the tank, the rest was gone. This isn't from any fish or critter.

Other SPS, same thing... They start dieing, I would break them off and lightly move them in the water and sheets of flesh would just peal right off. So this is nothing to do with anything eating them.

If Dori, only eats the zoas, then I can live without them, as there is no way of catching her, and I won't destroy my tank to do it. I just hope see doesn't develop the taste for the SPS.

This hobby just SUCKS sometimes!

[DiverDude]

I'll take your corals Ricky !!

[daniella3d]

There goes the myth about zoanthids being poisoned with palytoxine! lol!

That fish would be dead by now if they were poison.

Maybe you should exile your zoanthids to another tank, build a small frag tank and maybe with time this habbit of eating zoanthids will pass?

Only other thing I could think of is to try to cover the zoanthids with come mesh or protect them with some egg crate cage or something. Not very pretty though.

I would leave nori sheet each day all day.