It has recently dawned on me that I have a very aggressive reef tank due to impulsively buying "cool things." This has in turn limited my options when it comes to adding new inhabitants to the tank.
The culprits in my 90 gallon are a reef lobster, coral banded shrimp, and a Niger trigger. Over the past year I have seen my 6 line wrasse, Mandarin, & small clown fish go MIA. I have also seen my trigger gobble up cleaner and peppermint shrimp as soon as they were added to the tank even with the lights off. I also saw my coral banded shrimp eating my fire shrimp. I was told that Coral Banded Shrimp were reef-safe by my LFS. Guess not.
I would love nothing more than to have a large number of cleaner, blood, peppermint, and sexy shrimp but with my current livestock this is not possible. I would also like to have a mated pair of Occelaris Clownfish but with the current preditors they wouldn't stand a chance.
So my question is how do I get these aggressors out of my tank? The Coral Banded Shrimp should be easy enough. He is always hanging out on the rock acting like he owns the place so I should be able to net him fairly easily. I am not sure of the best way to net the Niger Trigger. I do not want to do any harm to the fish and am going to be sad to see this guy go (he is the only fish that will accept food from my hand). What is the best way to catch him given the fact that I have 160+ lbs of live rock and a decent amount of coral on top of that? Then there is the reef lobster. What a horrible buy. Even though I have never seen him eat any fish I am convinced that he is the worst of them all. To make things worse I never even see this guy even with the moonlights on. How could I get this guy out without disturbing all of the coral and live rock sitting on top of him?
Thanks in advance for the help.
The culprits in my 90 gallon are a reef lobster, coral banded shrimp, and a Niger trigger. Over the past year I have seen my 6 line wrasse, Mandarin, & small clown fish go MIA. I have also seen my trigger gobble up cleaner and peppermint shrimp as soon as they were added to the tank even with the lights off. I also saw my coral banded shrimp eating my fire shrimp. I was told that Coral Banded Shrimp were reef-safe by my LFS. Guess not.
I would love nothing more than to have a large number of cleaner, blood, peppermint, and sexy shrimp but with my current livestock this is not possible. I would also like to have a mated pair of Occelaris Clownfish but with the current preditors they wouldn't stand a chance.
So my question is how do I get these aggressors out of my tank? The Coral Banded Shrimp should be easy enough. He is always hanging out on the rock acting like he owns the place so I should be able to net him fairly easily. I am not sure of the best way to net the Niger Trigger. I do not want to do any harm to the fish and am going to be sad to see this guy go (he is the only fish that will accept food from my hand). What is the best way to catch him given the fact that I have 160+ lbs of live rock and a decent amount of coral on top of that? Then there is the reef lobster. What a horrible buy. Even though I have never seen him eat any fish I am convinced that he is the worst of them all. To make things worse I never even see this guy even with the moonlights on. How could I get this guy out without disturbing all of the coral and live rock sitting on top of him?
Thanks in advance for the help.
