Bristletail Filefish questions

[kaiboshi]

I'm looking at my options for controlling aiptasia and some annoying palythoas that keep coming back. I was looking at the bristletail filefish (Acreichthys tomentosus). I actually had a pair of them when I was interested in keeping softies and despite good feedings they went ape and ate every single zoa and paly in my tank. I wasn't alright with it at the time but having moved on to another stage of coral keeping I now want to see them eliminated.

My question is really regarding what else the filefish may or may not consume. I now keep LPS and SPS. I'm specifically interested in corals of the montipora genus (I like and keep weird monti caps and will move into encrusting monti's soon). I have a handful of acan lords, maybe a dozen chalices as well as a hammer, torch and frogspawn. I have a handful of ricordea and some GSP but I can relocate the GSP and don't care much about the ricordea.

I have read that these particular filefish are generally reef safe if well fed (though have experienced the opposite) with some individual exceptions: duncans, dendros and plating corals. By plating corals do they mean montipora capricornis?

With that said, What is the general concensus?

 

[kaiboshi]

No one has any ideas? Am I posting in the right forum?

 

[treylane]

Well, with the usual "every fish is different" caveats - SPS and more noxious LPS (euphyllias) and noxious softies (mushrooms) will most likely be fine with a bristletail. Plate corals (fungias and related), zoas, less-noxious lps (acans, favias, etc) will all be on the menu.

Fish that eat fleshy lps are usually perfectly happy to snack on chalices as well - but I notice that some of them don't make the connection that flat thing on rock = tasty, so fish that don't go on tasting-rampages often pass them over.

 

[badguitarist]

I have kept about a half dozen of these fish in my display tanks and propogation tanks so I have a pretty good idea of what they regularly eat and don't eat. every last one I have kept seams to go after xenia and anthelia so it would be safe to say they would probably go after pachyclavularia and clavularia as well. I have also had one eat an acanthastrea. here is what they have not eaten in my tanks acropora, montipora, euphilia (somewhat surprising!), palythoa, stylophora, pocillopora, seratiopora, pavona, fungia, rhodactus, discosoma, sorry this is an incomplete list as I am in a hurry if you have more specific questions ask away and I'll answer when I have time to think about it.
hope this helps,
Kyle