JENnKerry said:
For your information, it was Live Aquaria that said it. Maybe they're not the most accurate with their information. From what I have always understood, triggers are not really reef safe. I guess I have some learning to do when it comes to them.
I do not consider LA to be a great source of information. They're not the worst, but they tend to make blanket statements, just as people here often make. There's a wide range of behavior in triggerfishes, but unfortunately many people still spout the false concepts about no triggers being reefsafe, and all triggers being aggressive.
With the
Xanthichthys triggers, there is a chance that they will go after crabs and shrimp. You minimize the chances of that if you have those crustaceans well established before the trigger is in there. That said, I do know people who have kept shrimp and crabs for years in tanks with bluejaws and crosshatches.
One of the problems that comes about has already been touched on in this thread. Like the term "aquacultured", the term "reef-safe" is not very well defined. It means different things to different people. For me, it means corals. I know there's more to a reef than that, but that's what I stick with. From that standpoint, it allows me to think of these triggers at reef safe, as well as groupers and lionfish.
For those who feel that something that will go after shrimp and such is non-reef safe, then you could go all the way to the other end of the spectrum, and argue that hippo tangs, banggai cardinals and clownfish are not reef-safe. They eat amphipods and copepods like crazy. These are just smaller crustaceans, and arguably much more important to reef ecology than the larger cleaner shrimp.
Dave
