i love my melanurus, and have had it for about 6 months, maybe longer. it just recently made the shift from female to male, and it is definitely one of my favorite fish. it acts as a guardian to the corals and clams, and never nips at them or other fish (beyond self-defense or an occasional taste-test, at most). did notice a minor loss of small fanworms in the DT (they're still abundant in the sump), and i moved the giant featherduster and coco worm down to the refugium after introducing it because there was a mysterious feather decapitation (decoronation?) that occurred soon after, but overall a very healthy and friendly fish. i still have a clean-up crew too, though truthfully my nassarius population has dwindled somewhat. honestly, i think the dottyback was the cause of far more collateral CUC damage.
...kind of had a scare with mr. melanurus last week though. since the wrasse burrows into the sand at night, i'm used to it not being around too long after sundown, even though the blue lights are still on, but one evening last week i looked into the tank and saw the wrasse's tail hanging limp and motionless out of my crocea's mantle!
<img src="http://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/64648_10100940984750912_10104357_58504240_271392428_n.jpg" alt="wrasse vs clam"/>
innocent encounter, or violent violation? i suspect both parties were innocent, but only the wrasse ignorant (the clam was probably starting to choke a bit...). i was initially quite distraught, since the wrasse is awesome and the clam otherwise happy, but as i reached in and grabbed the wrasse's tail (thinking it dead...), it startled and popped out of the clam as if it had been caught doing something questionable and didn't want anybody to get the wrong impression.
it may have been whistling, i can't say.
the clam still feels traumatized, though
it's alive, but hasn't opened more than about a centimeter in days, and mantle extension has not been what it used to be. hopefully it'll come back relatively undamaged, despite any psychological scarring.
