Ok, before things get out of hand here, and we all start buying corallivores, let me make a couple comments.
And the big caveat, it's all based on hobbyist experience, I am by no means a biologist or marine biologist.
I think within the term corallivores, there seem to be tiers of difficulty.
I'm going to group them into three tiers, 1 - 3
Tier I
Take for instance the my Flavirostris and Rainforidi. Both have been labeled corallivores, yet they have taken to pretty much all prepared foods and are fat, happy and thriving. I know others, specifically Peter have had similar experiences.
Tier II
In the next tier, I would include the Octofasciatus, Larvatus, and Baronessa's - I may be missing a few others here too. I've had decent success with my Octofasciatus, however, it defintely requires a huge amount of food on a continual basis to not start withering away. I have it in my head that the situation will be the same with the Larvatus scheduled to arrive tomorrow. I say this without having attempted to keep the larvatus or Baraonessa's, so we'll see - I'm sure Peter will have some justified comments here.
Tier III
The fish we all want but can't have. Meyers, Ornate, Trifasciatus, reticulatus, Melapterus, benneti, Austriacus, and probably a few others i'm forgetting. Of the fish on this list, I have attempted the ornate and the trifasciatus. I was able to get the ornate to pick at a clam, but not the actual parts of the clam that matter. It seemed that this fish was more attracted to surfaces, as opposed to scents or tastes. It would continuously rasp at the outer edges of PVC pipes and the outside shell of the clams, leaving the fleshy inside completely untouched. I know there is a video on reef builders of some guy in Japan getting them to eat clams, and that's great, but at present, I don't think its possible.
The Trifasciatus that I attempted was small (sub 2") and was a fish that a LFS ordered in. I was never able to convince it to eat anything but coral polyps and it eventually perished.
It's my opinion, based on my limited experience, that the fish in Tier III are next to impossible to keep in an aquarium devoid of live coral. It's no questions that tier II fish require a high degree of care and planning, it's my opinion that the fish in Tier III require a complete genetic re-wiring.
It would be interesting for a person like Paka (Karen) to get some of these "tier III" butterfly fish collected as Larvae and to raise them to juveniles to see if it is truly genetic wiring issue or more a condition of the environment they grow up in.
Lastly, the fact that Kevin Kohen never has any of these Tier III fish for sale on DD speaks volumes. If there was someone in the hobby that was going to get the fish in this group to eat, it would be him.
I'd be interested to hear from him on this subject. Kevin, if you're listening, feel free to chime in. Also, Dayton, Ohio says hi.
& would simply throw a fish in without proper QT ... when I re-read DD's (not LA's QT) procedure, they've done most of the heavy lifting for me in my opinion - 95-99% of it, for which I'm grateful & paid for. If the zanzi looked bad after a few days it would have been because of my environment. I do follow a QT procedure, but I felt a DD specimen was personally worth the risk. Again, I'm clarifying my logic, not saying you should do the same. :beer:
