magnificent foxface

R

rschneid

New member
I screwed up. Only time will tell how badly. I asked my LFS for a fish which would help control algae and be reef safe. I got a magnificent fox face. In 1 day he has eaten 4 months worth of a purple gorgonian. Very sad. Not sure what he is going to eat next. I have seen him ripping into my zoas (which is ok, as they need trimming) and my zenias (again ok), nipping at my purple and green montipora (not ok), one nip at my clam (not ok). If I could get him out I would, but alas I do not see any easy way to do that. Anyone have any brilliant ideas for me? Its not like he does not have food to eat. I put a slab of seaweed and he ate that too. He is trimming back algae everywhere, but I am very sad to see the end of life for the gorgonian and am fearful for what may come next.

very sad
Rich S.
 
bottle trap

bottle trap

could you give me some detail on that? was that basically an inverted event, he swims in but can't easily swim out? What did you use for bait? How long did it take?

Thanks
Rich S.
 
I took a clear 2 liter bottle, cut the top off then cut the "spout" off and made a hole just large enough for him to swim through. I inverted the top and put it back inside the bottle. I put some garlic soaked mysis in there. He swam in, spazzed and couldn't figure out how to get back out of the "cone". Just google bottle fish trap
 
I borrowed an acrylic fish trap to catch my foxface. Your local reef club or LFS probably has one you could borrow. It took hours - he was the last fish to go in. Put some nori in and he'd probably go for it. Can you add a tang to control algae - my purple tang loves it - at least I assume he does, I never see any algae anywhere, I presume he's eating it all.
 
Just pump the water in your display into a couple rubbermaid brute trash cans. Even a smaller pump can empty your tank quickly.

Swimming fish will congregate in the lowest area of remaining water and you can net them out.

Refill the tank. Any corals you have will be absolutely fine during this process.
 
Wonton Soup said:
Just pump the water in your display into a couple rubbermaid brute trash cans. Even a smaller pump can empty your tank quickly.

Swimming fish will congregate in the lowest area of remaining water and you can net them out.

Refill the tank. Any corals you have will be absolutely fine during this process.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Works like a charm.
 
rschneid said:
I screwed up. Only time will tell how badly. I asked my LFS for a fish which would help control algae and be reef safe. I got a magnificent fox face. In 1 day he has eaten 4 months worth of a purple gorgonian. Very sad. Not sure what he is going to eat next. I have seen him ripping into my zoas (which is ok, as they need trimming) and my zenias (again ok), nipping at my purple and green montipora (not ok), one nip at my clam (not ok). If I could get him out I would, but alas I do not see any easy way to do that. Anyone have any brilliant ideas for me? Its not like he does not have food to eat. I put a slab of seaweed and he ate that too. He is trimming back algae everywhere, but I am very sad to see the end of life for the gorgonian and am fearful for what may come next.

very sad
Rich S.
Click to expand...

A foxface that is hungry will eat zooxanthellae. Actually any algae grazer, if hungry enough, will do that.
 
First off thank you everyone for great info and tips. The Foxface seems to have stabilized, no longer seems to be eating anything other than algae except for 1 thing. he stripped bare my purple gorgonian and it was a pretty good size one. He is still nipping at it occasionally. I think he developed a taste for it. I haved moved into period of mourning for the PG. I think its a goner. Can anyone confirm or deny that this might be normal for a fox face? Or is mine just partial to PG for some reason? Really he has lots of other food available...
 
75g + 30g sump - 9 months, nitrate 0 nitrite 16ppB mg 1380, Ca 465,
3 birds nests, growing out of control, Purple Gorgonian - until today growing like mad,
clam doing great, 3 Acan lords all budding off, white torch, frogspawn; growing, zoas everywhere and growing, palys same, The only things not growing observably are the pink and green montpora, - fish= 2 tangs, 1 blenny, 1 six line, 1 fox face lots an lots of snails and crabs,
skimmer decommissioned 10 days ago, large pile of macro algae acting as primary filter, after deep sand bed, in both display and sump. lots of life everywhere, pods pods everywhere pods. The skimmer never seemed to collect anything, could be I did not know how to set it, I played with it a lot, finally decided to dump it. Water chemistry as not changed appreciably except that the PH has gone down a little bit, used to vary from 7.9 to 8.3 now its closer to 7.79 to 8.15. Everything controlled by Apex.
 
I have been thinking about getting a magnificent foxface for my 110. Looking for an alage grazer that not too much of a bully. Right now I have a yellow watchman, 2 occ. Clowns and 4 Pajama Cardinals. Looking for something bigger and moves around. This kind of scares me a little now in paying the money for one and then it eating corals. I seen them in a decent number of mixed reef tanks on here though. Good luck.
 
He is a fantastic algae eater. He has a very powerful bite and he is biting stuff off of the rocks and sides that neither of my tangs ever touched. He has a great appetite too. However I am pretty sure the Gorgonian is gone. It was a great specimen. Maybe thats all he is going to eat, I don't see any signs now that he is eating any corals. If you get one, have a plan to get him out again.
 
damage done

damage done

here is a pic of the Gorgonian. At the time of this pic the Foxface has eaten about 75% of the polyps. Now, all the polyps are gone. I don't know if it can recover or not. I also don't know if the FoxFace will continue to eat anything that does emerge.
 

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before the damage

before the damage

meant to upload together. This one shows it before the Foxface arrive, its a couple of weeks back in time though.
 

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Based on the feedback I have changed my auto feeder from twice a day at 0900 and 1600 to 3x a day at 0700, 1200 and 1600. Hopefully this will keep the Foxface happier.

Thanks everyone
 
Not as bad as i thought

Not as bad as i thought

Ok, so I thought the FF had eaten all the polyps off of the gorgonian. But this morning most of them are back. So as in all things I guess nature has a way of surviving. The fox face does have a bunch of really sharp teeth in his mouth, got a close up look at them.! He spends a lot of time yanking and nipping at the gorgonian but the gorgonian must, for the greater part, be pulling back in before FF can do to much damage. Anyway, I am keeping him as he isn't doing the damage I attributed to him earlier. My apologies to the Society of Friends of the FoxFace.

Rich S.
 

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rschneid said:
Based on the feedback I have changed my auto feeder from twice a day at 0900 and 1600 to 3x a day at 0700, 1200 and 1600. Hopefully this will keep the Foxface happier.

Thanks everyone
Click to expand...

These fish eat algae (or failing that, zooxanthellae) and you have three in a 75 gallon tank. What are you feeding in your auto feeder?
 
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