Am I nuts?? I want to keep corals with non-reef safe fish (u

[SPC]

Posted by Jase:
It's not a need, but a challenge. If we didn't ry different things, we'd all have tanks full of star polyps and damsels.
If I could provide the correct food for the above fish, just as easily as I can provide food for my anthias, then where's the problem?

First of all I don't see where you are differentiating between need and challenge. The worlds coral reefs are in trouble and this hobby is one reason for this. This hobby is also an easy target for those wishing to ban all imports. By keeping coral eating fish with coral they eat, we are just giving these people more ammunition. The average person is not going to care if you raised the coral from a frag, all they are going to know is that some hobbiest actually feed coral to their fish. Many others BTW will be asking where that frag came from originally. In the end all imports will be banned, and I can't say I could blame them if our hobby chooses to be this irresponsible.
As to your damsel and polyp analogy

.
Steve

 

[Psyduck]

Sounds like an excellent experiment, and you sound like you are a responsable enough reefer to notice if a coral is being picked to death and get it out of there ASAP. I mean come on, the guy is not going "well if they corals get picked at so be it, too bad". He wants to house certain types of fish he enjoys with corals he enjoys to make a nice natural setting. The term "reef safe" is so general it's crazy. I mean is a fish that only eats say cleaner shrimp but no other corals or other inverts defined as "not reef safe". Usually in books, yes, but isn't this a bad generalization?? I say more power to you if you can succeed, but I trust that you will do this in a resonable way. Good luck!

 

[M.E.Milz]

Steve, I am curious what your position is on the following:

1) After adding some live rock to my tank, I discovered a mantis. Can I kill it?

2) I just found a rock crab in my tank that is feeding on my coral. Can I kill it?

3) I just discovered a patch of aptasia in my tank. Can I add a copper band butterfly to eat it? What about a peppermint shrimp.

4) My green star polyps are stinging and killing other corals. What should I do? Don't the star polyps have as much right to survival in my tank as the other corals?

5) Is it ok to feed my corals and fish live brine shrimp? If so, why?

6) Since none of us can admitedly maintain a reef tank environment that is absolutely as good as reefs in the wild, shouldn't we all quit this hobby? (although I might suggest that my FO tank will be closer to a natural reef then most FO tanks)

7) I like fish and meat. If people hear that I actually eat fish and meat, will they ban the practice altogether? I know PETA would like to.

Irrespective of how you feel about any of the above, I still think you are missing the point. If in the wild, fish A occaisionally nips at coral B, but does no permanent damage. Then why is it all of the sudden "irresponsible" when we put fish A in the same tank with coral B, and although fish A occaisionally nips at coral B, he does no permanent damage?

BTW, if you read the threads in the Industry section, you may be surprised that this hobby is NOT one of the reasons that reefs are suffering in the wild.

 

[Jase]

Steve

First of all I don't see where you are differentiating between need and challenge.
-Well we don't need to keep any of these critters do we? And I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of us get substantial satisfaction from the challenges reefkeeping poses.

The worlds coral reefs are in trouble and this hobby is one reason for this. This hobby is also an easy target for those wishing to ban all imports.
- Agreed.

By keeping coral eating fish with coral they eat, we are just giving these people more ammunition. The average person is not going to care if you raised the coral from a frag, all they are going to know is that some hobbiest actually feed coral to their fish.
- The average person thinks corals are plants. I don't buy this argument. Feeding a coral to a fish is the same as feeding an aiptasia to a Copperband.

Many others BTW will be asking where that frag came from originally.
- ?

In the end all imports will be banned, and I can't say I could blame them if our hobby chooses to be this irresponsible.
-I dont see how feeding a frag to a fish is irresponsible.

As to your damsel and polyp analogy

.

-If people didn't try different things, our reefkeeping skills wouldn't be up to much.

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: Jase ]</p>

 

[Tanu]

I've kept a orange spot filefish (oxymonocanthus longirostris) succesfully in my 50 G reef. Of course it ate sps corals, but the corals grew faster than the fish could eat.
After a few months, the fish also accepted brine shrimp and even FLAKE FOOD!!! The appetite for sps stayed.

When I moved to another appartment, I also had to move the tank. The coral growth dropped a little, so the fish ate more than the coral could grow. I gave away the fish to a fellow reefer with a mainly sps and leather reef. In his tank, the fish also accepted the common prepared foods, but didn't have acces to sps corals. After a few months, it died. We suspect it died from something 'lacking' in it's diet.

Tanu
www.tanu.nl

 

[SPC]

Posted by Mike:
BTW, if you read the threads in the Industry section, you may be surprised that this hobby is NOT one of the reasons that reefs are suffering in the wild.

Mike, if you read the threads in the industry forum you will notice that I participate in them. How you came up with the above statement is beyond me. This hobby IS partly responsible and that is discussed at length in that forum.
As to your other points (questions), my point is that it dosen't matter what you or I think about this, rather it is how we are viewed by others that will decide the fate of this hobby. You might be suprised if you read the Industry Forum, that those who participate are well aware of the image that the hobbiest portrays to those who would call for a total ban on marine animals. This is the reason we have been working on a not suitable for import list.
Steve

 

[SPC]

Jase, why don't you get a parrot fish too, they come from the reef, in fact you see them all the time while diving. With all the reef safe fish there are to choose from, I just don't understand why someone would need to have a known coral eater.
Steve

 

[M.E.Milz]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr> Mike, if you read the threads in the industry forum you will notice that I participate in them. How you came up with the above statement is beyond me. This hobby IS partly responsible and that is discussed at length in that forum.
<hr></blockquote>

This is not the impression that I got. I guess I should go back and re-read the threads, and if I am wrong, then I apologize.

In any event, I still disagree with your assesment that what I am doing is irresponsible.

Your assesment is predicated on the assumption that the corals that I add to my FO tank will certainly not survive. If this were true, then I would agree with you, to the extent that I am adding corals harvested from the wild. I disagree to the extent that I am adding cuttings or frags from my reef tank, since these are, in fact, completely renewable.

I also disagree with your assumption that the corals I add to my FO tank will not survive (or even flurish). I am challenging this assumption through my own experiments. And so far, I am demonstrating that there are types of corals that can be kept with these type of fish.

The bottom line is that you appear to be concerned that if someone hears that I successfully keep certain types of corals (eg, leathers, mushrooms and star polyps) with certain types of fish GENERALLY considered non-reef safe, they will be tempted to keep any type of coral with any type of fish. In other words, it sounds like you are afraid that a "little bit of information will be dangerous". I don't buy it. If I did, then I would never have added a DSB to my tank because, at one time, such a notion was foolish. So were plenums.

What if I told you that I was successfully keeping a reef tank without a protein skimmer? Would you call me irresponsible because others might get the idea that they can avoid using one, and therefore I am obligated to use one as well?

 

[FishHead1]

yes - you're nuts!

 

[M.E.Milz]

Steve, I certainly got the impression that your comments were directed to me and what I am doing. If that is not the case, then fine.

 

[munchieiam]

as a fairly new person to the hobby 6 mos, i think there very valid opnions on both sides of this. I for one am glad there are ppl like Mike that have the ressources and nerve to do something like this in a responsible manner. It can only help out in the long run to have a more detailed / precise info on what "non-reef safe" fish can actually be kept in a quasi-reef tank. To a further extent the more informed us beginners and the more experienced are as to what to can go with what vs what looks good and is very hard to maintain (not to mention RARE) will help the hobby stay around for a long time.

Thanks Mike for the time and effort you are putting into this, to do it the right way.

Joe

 

[clwnphish]

Two thumbs up for Mike! Mikes tanks are beautiful and if you knew anything about how much time and effort(not to mention $) he put in to his reef to make it the best enviorment possible most likely you would all take back your comments. Mike is a very dedicatd reefer and wouldnt sit and watch his corals die. Without people like him in our hobby we would be stuck at the level we are at right now. Lots of people try "non reef safe fish" and the people that do have some of the most breathtaking captive reefs I have ever seen. I dont want to get in a flame war or anything so I'll stop now.
-Mike I still owe you a frag. Maybe sometime we could trade again.
Clwn

 

[Anonymous]

Hey Mike, can you post pics of your tanks? Especially the "FO" one.

 

[SPC]

Posted by Clwnphish:
Without people like him in our hobby we would be stuck at the level we are at right now.

Would you clarify what you mean by "the level we are at right now"?
Steve

 

[plankton123]

Not so nuts. If I could figure out which fish eats only mushroom anemones and not any coral polyps I'd add it in a second. Sometimes the softies can be a real pain to control in a reef.

 

[smokinreefer]

what!! youd get a fish that would only eat mushrooms. so you would let it kill all the mushrooms in your tank! then what would you do when there were no more mushrooms, would you buy more to keep it alive , or would you just let it wither away and die. shame on you so irresponsible!!

j/k

seriously tho, i dont see a problem with setting up a frag tank to house a known coral eater>> orange spot filefish. the filefish is a stunning looking creature, and i do have an ugly brown monti that no one wants, not even my lfs! so now i have all these monti frags lying around in my sump. this would be away to naturally dispose of them, while sustainig another creature at the same time. but i seriously doubt that the filefish would be diminish all the frags before they had a chance to grow back. so seeing how these are all frags that i have cultured, would it be irresponsible for me to do that? i dont think so.

whos knows, when my 135 is a few more years old and the sps are nice sized colonies, maybe i would be a good candidate to try a orangespot filefish. certainly a healthy system full of growing sps could handle, recover and grow despite the minmal damage caused by a small single specimen of fish that likes to munch on polyps. that is what happens in the natural reef isnt it?

and what about all those threads i see about people pruning and wanting to flush their excess xenias. that certainly isnt responsible reefkeeping is it? is that not the basically the same situation as this?

does this make any sense?

anyhow, great discussion.

and Milz, please do find some one to take and post more pics of your tanks for me...i mean us to see!

 

[SPC]

Mike, you may notice that when I jumped into this thread I was responding to jase and his comments about feeding coral to aquarium fish. No where have I indicated that what you are doing is wrong, this was an assumption on your part. If however you are advocating feeding live coral to your fish as a means to keep them alive, then I stand by my statements above. If this is the only way to supply an aquarium fish with the nutrition they need, then leave that fish in the ocean. Again, my point here is not to defend the quality of one animal over another, it is to point out how this hobby is viewed by those who will implement a total ban on marine imports. Feeding live corals to an aquarium fish is definately not a good PR move for this hobby.
Steve

 

[M.E.Milz]

Update

Yesterday, I added yellow button polyps, brown/green button polyps, gree star polyps, and a few more mushrooms (these came from my other tanks). I also added a few sps frags (a digitata, bali staghorn, anacropora). The sps frags were small branches that had broken off from the mother colonies in my reef tank and were laying on the bottom (and would have died anyways).

I have not seen an evidence that any of the leather corals or mushrooms that were added last week have been harmed or even nipped at. They all look healthy. The yellow and brown buttton polyps alos appear to be untouched.

My fuscus trigger has yanked some of the star poly colonies off of their mountings, but has left other colonies alone (I added 3 colonies in different locations). The trigger does not appear to be eating these colonies, just messing with them like he does with small rocks. I think they would have been ok had I done a better job of gluing the edges down.

Some of the sps frags have been knocked down, but others look intact (particularly the anacropora). It is unclear whether anything is trying to eat the frags, or if they are just getting bumped. Things can get frenzied in this tank at times.

BTW, thanks for the pat on the back clwnfish, but I think you give me too much credit.

I will post pictures of my tanks next time I have a chance to borrow a dig camera.

 

[Anonymous]

It seems to me that people are not realizing that there are several factors to determine whether a fish is reef safe or not and only one is the fact that it eats corals. Perhaps a better way to look at it is to classify the non-coral eaters as "not reef recommended". This means they can be kept, but there are special considerations for their welfare. Other conventional factors to determine reef compatibility range from size, aggressiveness, crustcean eater, sand sifter (remember when this was good?), to rock mover. The tanks that we plan now require trade offs to accomdate the organisms we wish to keep (lights, current, fish and corals). What is being done in this experiment is to compile a new list on possible co-inhabitants. One more choice to consider when setting up your display tank.

It wasn't that long ago that we would have had just as a lively discussion on whether anemones or SPS should be kept at all because of the poor survival record. This experiment appears to be a far less barbaric process using these captive frags by an experienced reefer then the years of anemones puking, and SPS colonies receeding/bleeching to get us to a point where we have learned to care for them.

I wonder how many people who object to feeding fish frags have objections to feeding reptiles rodents or other live foods? How about feeding a pair of harlequin shrimp a chocolate-chip starfish?

-Greg
]

[ January 18, 2002: Message edited by: GDawson ]</p>

 

[naesco]

You sir are both irresponsible and nuts.
You have a dated attititude when you and others who support you think it is OK to experiment with creatures we strive to keep alive.
It is OK for the benefit of the critters and the hobby and science, to advance our knowledge as is done by both scientists and expert reefers.
But you are neither a scientist nor an expert by any stretch of the imagination.
Please read a good book like The Concientious Marine Aquarist and please stop what you are doing now.