Bad boy bicolor - need advise

[sn00p123]

Hi guys,

I have a 500g softy/LPS tank stocked with all reefsafe fish except for 2, a bicolor and a flame angel.

For over a year neither of these fish touched anything.. and as is the experience with a lot of other reefers, one of them suddenly decided to change that. Let me describe his behaviour to you .... nips leathers few times a day before they open up during the mornings, nips only 1 of 5 gsp colonies when closed.. but the gsp grows and doesnt care...... and savagely rips apart a colony of palys but DOES NOT EAT THEM! He has ripped them apart from their roots, they float away and a whole bunch has accumulated near the front glass.... whats going on? what is the stupid fellow trying to do? Is this natures way of helping my palys colonize elsewhere? He doesnt touch any of the free floating polyps. btw, I feed quite heavily, so he should be ok dietwise

Anyway, my family is strongly against me giving away the bicolor as he has been with us from day 1... this leaves me with the following questions

1) If he isnt eating the polyps, is he just playing around? I also noticed that he does this with every new zoa colony and then eventually leaves them alone. wth

2) the corals I have that go completely untouched at this point are mushrooms, rics, cespetularia, bubble coral and favites... Is it safe to assume then that other LPS would be ok? I would like to add some open brains, euphylia and candy canes....what do you think?

3) also given he doesnt touch my cespetularia colony (thank god) do you think its safe to add the common non pulsing xenias?

At that stage where I have one problem child that I cant get rid off but is preventing me from trying anything else in the tank :sad2:

 

[Fish Biscuit]

Euphyllias are supposed to be quite nasty tasting. I'm not sure about candy canes but I would bet that he will pick at the brain for sure.

 

[Dmorty217]

The only way to know for sure is to try it one piece at a time, but I'm willing to bet the brain will get picked at. The bicolor doesn't sound very picky and is quite destructive to some corals all of a sudden and I wouldn't suspect the angel would go back to not picking and destroying

 

[HumbleFish]

I have a similar problem with my Lemonpeel. It got so bad that I had to relocate my candy canes and xmas tree rock to the frag tank. Like you, my wife won't let me get rid of him. So what I've done is started feeding the tank 2-3x daily. And while this hasn't completely eliminated the problem; I'm at least to the point now where his picking isn't doing anymore permanent damage. I just don't get the coral growth I used to. :angryfire: But everything he picks on (leathers, frogspawn, etc.) seems to be holding their own.

 

[sn00p123]

Man I wish this had an easy solution... are euphyllias nasty tasting to some of these fish? I didnt know that, I might give them a try.... are there other softies or LPS that are noxious??

What about easier to keep sps like some montis?

 

[Rea17]

I was in a situation much like yours with a flame angel. It woke up one morning and decided it wanted to destroy coral. I would watch it go around on a repetitive circuit around the tank, viciously tearing at each coral and not giving anything time to recover. That fish needed to be removed.

IME, once an angel starts becoming destructive it won't just stop on it's own. I've read interesting articles suggesting that they do this out of boredom - but who knows what's going on in a fish's mind. My tank was very well fed at the time I was seeing this behavior from my flame, and honestly with your bicolor, I doubt it will stop what it's doing now. Most new corals become targets with angels, so I wouldn't add anything without being prepared to remove it. I have a friend who has to add new corals at night otherwise her Majestic angel thinks he's being fed and tears into them! Doesn't seem to notice them the next morning, though. Euphyllias are a stinging LPS, and I think that is part of what protects them from excess nipping. Brains and zoas are big no-nos in tanks that house angels.

If your bicolor is nipping at GSP, I'm not sure what he wouldn't touch! I'm going the mixed reef/angel route with my new tank, and all of the zoas and fleshy LPS are getting removed. Those types of corals getting eaten is just inevitable. I plan on having a lot of softies (xenia is known to get eaten) mainly an assortment of leathers, GSP, gorgonian, Euphyllias, etc. A lot of my coral selections will be trial and error. If you have mature SPS, its usually ok, but you may notice less polyp extension.

 

[sn00p123]

haha, yeah it does actually look like he is doing it out of boredom or just to p!$$ me off..

Interestingly I have damsels who nip at anything (including plain ole rock) I put into the tank new as well. Your friend's technique of adding corals at night sounds like something Id like to try. The funny thing about the GSP is that there are multiple colonies in the tank, one colony grows so fast it has pieces of mat protruding off the main rock in the current - the bicolor nips only the underside of that mat.... it has never touched any of the other GSP colonies.... wierd.

Speaking of fleshy LPS - would you consider bubble corals to be fleshy LPS? the bubbles are just water filled sacs... the bicolor doesnt look at this twice, even when its just opening and beginning to show its fleshier parts. The bubble coral is 12 ins across now and quite happy.... was considering adding one more but not so sure now.

What else do you plan on adding? I may try a similar stocklist

 

[Rea17]

I would consider the bubble coral to be at risk, but maybe the size of it is deterring the angel? It's hard to say. I'm centering my coral stocking around large angels - I'm aiming for a mixed reef scenario, but I'm going to wait on most of my SPS until the tank has been set up for a while. I really love LPS so I'm going to try and have lots of varieties of hammer, frogspawn, torch, maybe some bubble and elegance depending on how the angels take to them. I'm also looking at different varieties of toadstools, devil's hand, yellow fiji leather, sinularia, gsp, anemones, etc. As far as the SPS goes, nothing too fancy. The downside to having a tank filled with noxious corals (to deter nipping angels) is that it's pretty hard on acros. Now if you want to go all SPS, that's another story. But like I said before, it's wise to let your colonies mature a bit before adding angels. Since you already have a misbehaving bicolor I'm not sure if that's a great option.