I am getting ready to purchase a tank that has a pink tailed trigger in it- how aggressive are these fish and are they reef compatable? I currently have 2 clowns, 1 purple tang, 4 damsels, a flame angel, and a rpyal gramma- is there going to be fighting, chaos, MASS DISTRUCTION if I keep the pink tailed trigger? some of the websites i found said that this was one of the only triggers that should be in a reef- jsut wondered if anyone had any first hand experience with them.
pink tailed trigger
- Thread starter bveselka
- Start date
Chibils
halide loyalist
The general consensus is that they are *more* reef safe than a lot of other triggers, but that's no guarantee. They will probably terrorize your clean-up crew, and depending on the size will probably be fine with what you have. Take that with a grain of salt, though, as I'm not a trigger expert.
Chibils
halide loyalist
I don't know that I agree with this. I never said that the pinktail was the most reef safe. However, I would put it in the top five or six. As far as reef safe goes, there is a chance that any large fish, when full-grown, will pick. Genicanthus angels, which do not naturally touch corals, have been reported to pick - stress and in incompatible diet can cause fish to act in ways not natural to them. The same can be said for Xanthichthys triggers. They are reef safe unless you force them to eat your corals. After X. auromarginatus, X. mento, X. ringens, and X. caerulineatus[/i], (bluejaw, crosshatch, sargassum, and [no common name], respectively) pinktails go up toward the top of my list. So do small nigers (mean and coral-hungry when bigger!).
Then again, I'm no trigger expert.
kirkaz
Jade
"Reef Safe" is a bit of an inappropriate word when decribing Triggers in my opinion....Will a Pinktail eat your corals? I doubt it...Will a Pinktail eat your inverts? Maybe not....Will a 9 or 10 inch Pinktail beat the crap out of any small fish he wants? Hell yes....Pinktail may be "Reef Safe", does not mean an adult PT is in any way a good "Community Fish". I would place the Pinktail as very similar tempermant to a Niger, very well behaved as juvis, very Triggerlike adults...I see posts on here all the time "I have had my 4 inch Niger for a year and he is peaceful"...Still waiting to hear this one though, "I have had my Niger 5 years, he's almost a foot long and he is peaceful"....But I won't hold my breath on that post.
steelhead97
New member
I had one and he did not nip at corals at all. Soemone mentioned he will nip at the cleanup crew; he did more then nip at them. I used to have 60 crabs of various sizes and snails, i've seen him go at the snails and there were lots of empty shells laying around. As for being aggressive he was very peaceful to other fish and I had three tangs, 2 angels, clown fish, damsels and wrasse. As far as looks I also think he's one of the cooler looking triggers out there with the exception of the crosshatch. I would not house a trigger in anything less than a 200 gallon though they can get big fast.
Chibils
halide loyalist
I guess I should have elaborated on that (since I started on it with my last post). "Reef safe" is a very ambiguous term. Does it mean that it won't eat corals? Corals and inverts? Corals, inverts, small reef fish? I used it in the strictest sense, that it probably won't eat corals (and maybe won't annihilate your CUC).
