How much do you trust your carpet?

[jda]

I have had a blue/teal carpet for quite some time now. A pair of ture percs host in it. I feed it 2-3 times per week with krill, mysis, shrimp, octo, etc. It is doing well.

It has never caught or eaten any fish. The fish, and even the skunk cleaners, go and pick mysis out of it when I feed it and don't seem too scared of it.

How much do you trust them? I have a pair of Watanabei angels that I want to move to this bigger tank, but I am somewhat leery. These fish are super nice and I have had them for almost 2 years.

I know that people have found fish in their carpets, but are these healthy fish? or fish that were dying anyway and the carpet took advantage of a free meal?

 

[AJF]

Hi,
I've heard lots of people ''complaining'' of their carpets saying that it ate some of their fish. and that fish were healthy.. normally what happens it's during the Night the fish are ''sleeping'' and the carpet may catch those fishes...

 

[kellyandcarrie]

Good queston, this may sound stupid but, carpets get pretty big, and I've noticed that fish tend to stay away from them, so I wonder how much more room they will really have. However 210 galls is huge. I think really all the fish has to do it touch it... not shure, but carpets are sticky as *** and sting like a *****. I dont think I would trust it, but hey, it's not my fish, just my 2 cents...

 

[jda]

They touch it when they pick food out of it. The carpet does not really seem to care. The shrimp are the funniest. They seem to land on it, grab some food, get kinda stuck and then jerk away.

Maybe it helps to feed them like I do.

The clowns kinda keep the other fish away some - but not quite like the maroons do with the BTAs.

Anybody have any acutal experiences?

 

[H2OTight]

I have a medium sized carpet (6 or 7 inches across) that has eaten 1 hippo tang and 2 blue-green chromis. All three fish were small, all three were eaten at night (on different nights), all three fish were healthy, and all three fish were new to the tank. The fish had just been released from quarantine within 1 week of becoming food. I know the carpet ate them as I found "parts" of them regurgitated? then next evening. I have 2 clowns that don't host the anemone, and I feed the carpet twice weekly various food bits. I also currently don't have any sort of moon lighting, so maybe the newcomers stumbled into the wrong bed. Just thought I would share my experience.

 

[phender]

If your fish are able to pick food out of your haddoni carpet then it is not as sticky as it should/could be.
I have lost a large number of fish (tangs, dwarf angels, rabbitfish) to haddoni carpets over the years. Most of them before I realized what was happening. Some of the fish I had had for several years before they finally made a fatal mistake.
There is no way I would risk a pair of Watanabei angels with a haddoni carpet.

 

[hgbarwick]

Right now I don't really trust my carpet. He is inches away from my torch coral.

 

[aquadog]

A healthy carpet will definitely not discriminate when it comes to the cost of the fish it encounters. The most risky time of day IMO is lights out. Many of my fish scatter to their night time safety zone and occasionally, particularly when a fish is new to the tank, a wrong turn would be fatal. The best plan is to have as subtle a lights off patten as possible and to have some kind of dim light for the tank so your fish can find their way even when the lights do go off.
Adding the angels would be risky but probably only until they learned their way around the tank. The riskiest period would be in the first two weeks or so. No guarantees. I have a pair of Golden pygmy angels that I have had for about a year with my green haddoni (5 years in my care) without problems. They were so shy when I got them however,that I assumed that since I did not see them for 2 months after I introduced them that they had both been taken down by my carpet. Happily, they had not been... Good luck if you do it.