Hey John,
To confirm what I read in your article in this TOTM, you are attributing your success with Angles in the reef from two primary factors;
1) healthy corals are not targeted - get em healthy and happy and the fish will leave em alone
2) feeding multiple times - 2x per day - get's fish lazy so they do not "look for food" cause they know it's coming.
Anything else you want to add or expand on? I think your article has pushed me over the edge... I believe a few angle fish are in my future, but i'm very nervous. (and I want my tank to mature for another 6-12 months)
Congrats on such outstanding success in something that is so truly difficult.
There are many factors when it comes to my success with angels in reef tanks... I do an entire one hour talk on it and still it's hard to cover everything, but the #1 you list above is at the top of the list and is almost never talked about! While SOME angels will target SOME corals even when healthy, for the most part a lot of these circumstances could be seen in advance and controlled. I will say that with SPS corals there is NO angel I would have a problem keeping. I could say with confidence that NO angel will kill a healthy sps coral by itself.
There is something that goes on that I've called the "pleco effect" for years... named after the well known freshwater suckerfish. In my high school days I worked at a huge LFS with about 100 saltwater tanks and 200 freshwater tanks... people would regularly come in and say "my pleco ate my fish!"... sometimes they'd have the pleco in a bag even! I'd explain to them that no, their pleco did not kill their fish, but instead was opportunistically taking advantage of a dead, dieing, or otherwise stressed fish. This same thing happens with angelfish ALL OF THE TIME. I've seen it myself through the years...
Unfortunately in this hobby, and in human nature as a whole, we often look for an answer that is easily quantifiable... how many times is lighting blamed in this hobby? In reality, many expert aquarists could get beautiful results from any bulb or lighting system on the market. Water quality on the other hand, is so misunderstood and is so much more often the culprit. I know many "experts" in this field... authors and people I respect very highly, and still to this day we do not fully understand the chemistry in our tanks that goes on... especially when it comes to long term sps success... water chemistry goes WAY beyond what even today's test kits tell us. Keeping a thriving reef aquarium for years, especially an sps aquarium, is still to this day a VERY tough thing to achieve... you cannot argue that. It is very common that people have initial success only to run into problems years down the road... so many of these problems are due to water quality, yet many times it's beyond what even the best test kits tell us... sometimes it's bad enough that the test kits will tell us but we cannot rectify it... whatever the cause... the initial symptoms are nonthriving corals... by "nonthriving" I do not even mean sick or dieing... just a coral in some state other than optimal health. This initial state is very hard for novice reefers to diagnose... seasoned reefers who "know" their corals can diagnose this...
Anyway, angelfish are much more apt to pick on these corals... and as a matter of fact MANY fish are. But, many people jump to the conclusion that the angelfish are the problem, when in reality it's water quality or something else. Now of course there are certain corals that even when healthy will get picked on to the point where they do not thrive, but if you like angels that much and are willing to remove a coral from time to time, or avoid some completely, than go for it! You could have a beautiful mixed reef like my 60 with angels too... not just sps!
In regards to your number two, this is also important, not just for angels but for many fish! It reminds me of when I was in college and lived in a fraternity house... we had a cupboard there with some canned foods from God knows when... usually I wouldn't touch these... but on some nights after :beer: I'd wake up at 4 am and get hungry... if you are in dire straits you'll eat many things! Just like that tang that gets fed every three days in the tank with only the crappy tasting algaes... they'll start munching corals! Feed your fish two times a day!
So, generally, if you get angels and they start munching certain corals, don't blame them! If you do, you'll also have let the local game warden know about the plague of vultures attacking and killing deer on the side of roads!:bounce3:
Copps
