Blue throat trigger for mixed reef?

airtime23

New member
I'd like to get your experiences with blue throats in mixed reefs. I know that they're considered reef safe "with caution", but what is your experience in a real-world situation? Those of you that have them or have had them, did they nip or eat coral? Inverts?

Thanks in advance.
 
I have a blue throat and never had a problem with corals....keep the fish fed well and he will leave your snails and crabs alone...if not, all of a sudden your inverts will start to diminish!!! Good luck and a awesome fish to have in your reef...
 
You are safe. I had a BT pair that never nipped or ate any coral or inverts.

One thing to keep in mind is that triggers are inquisitive, and may pick up and move around anything that isn't glued down. Make sure you glue down your frags.
Also: from time to time they may run into a SPS that is sticking out in the water column, and break it accidentally (all large fish may accidentally do this).

As far as CUC are concerned, my male BT used to search around the tank, and collect all of the hermits, and put them in a pile in the middle of the tank and watch them all disburse from the pile about twice a day for fun, but never ate or harmed any of them.

I have everything from open brains to digis, to polyps, duncans, anenomes, clams, hammers, frogspawns, etc... The trigger has never nipped at anything. At feeding time, when food lands on the coral, the trigger may swim up to the coral, and blow the food off and eat it as it falls off of the coral, but it never has mouth to coral contact...
 
I've had a BT in my 150g mixed reef about 1 year with no problems. He is about 7 inches at this time. One of my favorite fish.
 
for some reason the one i had wreaked terror in my 125. ate some chromis, bit the arse off a large bangaii and hte head off a YWG.
good luck...
 
Ouch.... You sure it was a BT trigger?

The only time mine showed any aggression was when he was trying to mate with the female, but that was just the occasional charge for the most part.

Mine was always fine with smaller fish unless I dropped one in in the middle of the day with the lights on, and he thought it was food...
 
I've had four blue throat triggers since I've been in the hobby. Every experience has been different from the next. One thing they all had in common is none of the triggers bothered corals or inverts.

The first trigger was great at first and then snapped one day. I had a six inch pencil wrasse that just came out of three weeks of hiding and the next day the blue throat bit the tail clean off of the wrasse. Then a day or two later the blue throat swallowed my yellow watchman goby up to the head, chewed him up, and then spit him out. A couple of weeks later when I was out of town he decided to go carpet surfing.

My second trigger was the polar opposite of my first. The second one would not eat and would hide for days at a time. I bought a second trigger, a pinktail, to help teach the young blue throat how to eat. This worked for a while, but eventually the blue throat died.

I currently have a male/female pair and I couldn't be happier with my experience with them. They're extremely docile unless provoked. They are the guardians of new fish. Any new fish that is added which ends up on the one side of the tank is protected from the other fish by the blue throats. It's actually quite interesting to watch.

If you have the tank size to support the fish I recommend trying out the blue throats in a m/f pair. If you want a single trigger I'd recommend a pinktail. They're by far my favorite over blue throats.
 
I've had four blue throat triggers since I've been in the hobby. Every experience has been different from the next. One thing they all had in common is none of the triggers bothered corals or inverts.

The first trigger was great at first and then snapped one day. I had a six inch pencil wrasse that just came out of three weeks of hiding and the next day the blue throat bit the tail clean off of the wrasse. Then a day or two later the blue throat swallowed my yellow watchman goby up to the head, chewed him up, and then spit him out. A couple of weeks later when I was out of town he decided to go carpet surfing.

My second trigger was the polar opposite of my first. The second one would not eat and would hide for days at a time. I bought a second trigger, a pinktail, to help teach the young blue throat how to eat. This worked for a while, but eventually the blue throat died.

I currently have a male/female pair and I couldn't be happier with my experience with them. They're extremely docile unless provoked. They are the guardians of new fish. Any new fish that is added which ends up on the one side of the tank is protected from the other fish by the blue throats. It's actually quite interesting to watch.

If you have the tank size to support the fish I recommend trying out the blue throats in a m/f pair. If you want a single trigger I'd recommend a pinktail. They're by far my favorite over blue throats.

I've had similar experiences, and agree with what is above in blue. I can't speak for the rest, because I haven't had that experience as my current BT are my only ones. It's very interesting to see how the BT pair up, and interact with eachother. Wait until you see the mating dance. It's truly spectacular. As noted, make sure you have the tank size for it. I have a 225g, and my female gave up on the mating ritual before the male did, and went into hiding where she later starved and died. Also to be noted, the male may become aggressive to other larger fish while attempting to mate. My male BT and parrotfish were absolute enemies during this time, and their bickering scared my little fish into the rockwork only coming out to eat. After the female passed, the male and parrotfish began to get along with no aggression again, and all of the smaller fish were out and about again. If I had the opportunity, I would've moved the male and female BT to a separate tank for the mating period...

I had my male for 1 month before I got a female, and when I added her, they bickered for a few months because the female was larger (that was only towards eachother. no other fish was the target of aggression). Once the male put on some weight, and outsized the female, they paired up, and were inseparable. Outside of that, the mating period was the only time I've ever seen aggression from these fish.
 
In my experience it was very gentle. Did not bother a thing but it loved to knock everything over. Frags, rocks, snails, hermits, and even dug up my conch.
 
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