Is it cruel to move an emperor after a few months?

[ryanollerton03]

I recently bought a 5ft x 2ft x 2ft tank that already had rock and 5 tangs 3 which are very big. Nasso regal and sailfin. I have a massive problem with ovwrgrowth of kenya tree and Xenia. I've tried avert thing to get rid of it. Scrubbing with wire brush, injecting with lemon juice and vinegar etc. I just can't think of anything else. Now there's no other coral in the tank so a complete coral nuke is fine. I have got someone picking the large tangs up tomorrow as I feel the tank is definitely too small and think the previous owner was a little ill informed keeping them in such a small tank. So leaving very few fish in the tank I was considering buying a emperor and keeping it for a few months to eat the soft coral and sending back to the lfs as they said I could. My question is, is it cruel to get a fish for a few months to end up sending it back?

 

[Chrisjbarry]

I don't think they will eat leathers. My friend has an emporator, queen, blueface all in a tank with softies and mushrooms. They only go after any zoa or sps he puts in except for his montis.

 

[ryanollerton03]

Another fantastic idea out the window lol. I hadn't done much research on them yet but the guy at the fish shop said to look into it.

Thanks for info.

 

[snorvich]

I don't think they will eat leathers. My friend has an emporator, queen, blueface all in a tank with softies and mushrooms. They only go after any zoa or sps he puts in except for his montis.

Correct. But I empathize with the problem.

 

[alton]

I don't see the emp eating Xenia, mine didn't. Freshwater dips will kill them if you can take out the rock one at a time. A friend of mine killed all of his in a 158 gallon tank. The pictures are two different Imperators in two different tanks

 

[larac]

Do a search on Fluke tabs. I had GSP and Xenia overgrowth. Had to do two treatments, and you have to clean, clean, clean- and do the obligatory water changes. It got rid of all of it though.

 

[Chrisjbarry]

Do a search on Fluke tabs. I had GSP and Xenia overgrowth. Had to do two treatments, and you have to clean, clean, clean- and do the obligatory water changes. It got rid of all of it though.

Someone local here posted they had good luck doing that as well.

 

[ryanollerton03]

I was also wondering about directly injecting them with hydrogen peroxide as this will avoid my inverts getting harmed. Anyone think this could work where the lemon juice injection didn't.

Cheers Chris for advice. Think it may be time to search for fluke tabs but heard they are hard to find these days.

 

[stunreefer]

I would remove covered rocks and chip off the corals. Sell/give away to newbies or trade at LFS. Seems unnecessary to kill it all off when many, many people would be ecstatic to house these corals

Killing in the tank would obviously create all kinds of nutrient issues which seems to me much more work than a day dedicated to manually removing corals. You would likely have little sprouts pop back up eventually, but would be considerably easier to remove in tank when that time came.

 

[pixie4484]

As far as moving the fish, just keep it well fed and do the proper introductions upon bringing it back to the tank

 

[Spartan]

The emperor will not eat leathers and xenia ime.