Reefers, what do you AVOID adding in your tank because they may hurt your corals?

[mandyplo]

Struck me today that adding something like an urchin may be a bad idea if it decides to crawl over my clams.... What living creatures do you avoid/with caution/will never add to your tank because they can irritate hurt or damage your corals or inverts?

[FitoPharmer]

Crabs. Especially the sally light foot. The only crabs that are alright: very very tiny hermits and emerald crabs. And even those two can still irritate coral when they climb on it. But their cleaning services in small numbers are usually worth the closed up corals.

[asylumdown]

I would extend that to a blanket 'everything I didn't pay for'.

I break all frags and corals off their base rocks or plugs and throw them away. I aggressively clean (and sometimes bleach) the exposed skeletons of LPS. Rock from other people's tanks/tanks at the LFS are very effective vectors for problem algae, flatworms, and all sorts of other things I don't even know about I'm sure.

Other than that I don't really avoid anything other than fish who include coral as a primary part of their diet. I also won't buy any softies like toadstools because this reef is mostly SPS and I've heard they can go to chemical war.

[lastlight]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

I break all frags and corals off their base rocks or plugs and throw them away. I aggressively clean (and sometimes bleach) the exposed skeletons of LPS. Rock from other people's tanks/tanks at the LFS are very effective vectors for problem algae, flatworms, and all sorts of other things I don't even know about I'm sure.

I did this too previously and it works great so long as you don't also buy things like frogspawn, acans etc where you need to allow a small portion of branching skeleton or rock into the tank. you could bleach these as best you can I guess but might be pretty tough in some cases.