how can i stop fish eating corals

S

stuart_nash83

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Dec 31, 2005
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i purchaced a mushroom coral a while back and it was doing great until last week when i noticed some chunks had been taken out of it and it was barely coming out fully. now it seems to not come out at all and i really do not want this to die. i caught one of my damsels (blue thined damsels) nipping at it is this normal?

the fish i have are

1 yellow tang
1 regul tang
1 powder blue tang
1 lipstick tang
1 vampire tang ( which is stunning)
1 strawberry gramma
1 skunk clown
1 pink skunk clown
2 perculia clowns
2 tomatoe clowns
3 green chromis
2 regul damsels
1 blue fined damsel
1 domino damsel
1 humbug damsel
3 coral gobbies
1 orange spotted gobbie

do any of these fish pose a threat to my corals? i also can never keep pulsing which is a great shame because it is my favorite.

(oh and yes all clowns get along and all tangs i have a large tank.)
 
whoa when you say you have a big tank i hope you mean like 500 gallons!
you have a massive amount of fish there.
have you checked your water par's? amonia, nitrite and nitrate?
do you do water changes?
with all those fish its no surprise any coral will be nipped at but im gonna lean towards theres something wrong with your water quality
unless this is a joke with all those fish?
 
Lots of those fish will nip corals, particularly the tangs. You can't make them stop, but you can try keeping them stuffed by leaving Nori in the tank all day long.
I hope it's a mighty big tank, that's a lot of fish and some of them get HUGE! :)
 
im still dying to know the size of this tank lol
if they cant keep xenia im sure they have bad water quality, the mushrooms are prob all shrivled and being picked at
whats the lighting too? xenia needs high lighting, and if you have a huge tank over 300 gallons your gonna need an MH light
 
If his tangs are getting along he must have a big tank, but still what size system?
Damsels are notorious for nipping at corals and being bossy.

stuart_nash83 said:
(blue thined damsels .)
Click to expand...

Hold on there! Maybe this is why your damsels turned to the dark side. :idea: :)
 
my tank is 460 litres....
the tangs funny enough swim together.....the clowns get along fine too although do seem to have their own areas unlike the tangs that they will defend against the other clowns. but i have alot of rock work aswell which helps.

the water quality is brilliant i do water changes every two weeks and test the water every day so can not work out why the pulsing coral wont grow, so many people have told me aswell how theirs grows like a weed and they cant control it.

in regards to feeding i buy totalnutrition marine flakes and i give that to the fish twice a day with brine shrimp, i also keep sea weed for the tangs which i put in through out the day.

the corals are fed with aquacultured nannochloropsis oculata, (liquid life) marine plankton and coral plankton as well as natural strontium and trace soft made by salifert. all theses arnt added at the same time, some only once a week.

i also use a reef buffer to keep a good ph level.
 
ive been advised to re home the damsels especially the domino and blue thinned which are roughly 1.5"

i do have quite an attachment to my fish so really do not want to unless it is absolutely essential for the welfare of the corals. even though my blue thinnes is rather ugly...it changed from a cute pearly white fish with a yellow top and electric blue thins to a navey sort of dull black colour, and my domino is rather mean. everytime my hand is in the tank hes trying to attack me....speaking of which is this usual behaviour for a domino i know they can get quite nasty but i thought towards other fish and not me.

i really want to get my coral looking beautiful and healthy so any advise on how to achieve this will be much appreciated.
 
is that too many fish? the tank is not by all means over crowded! remember alot of the fish are small...the coral gobies are only about 1.5cm.

the tank has been establish for well over a year.

i have built the rock work up mainly along the back leaving an area at the front of just sand to give a swimming area for the fish. my tangs are not fighting at all and generally i have no problem with the fish fighting although the domino seems to rule the tank.
 
i also have agreen bubble anenome which is doing fine....surely if the tank was too over crowded it wouldnt? it was really big and growing beautifully but unfortunately when i added more pumps to give a better flow and move ment of water it made him move but to the wrong place and was sucked up the pump. i manage to resque him and secured the pumps so it could not happen again. i was very lucky it did not kill the poor thing and everything elce in my tank. you hear stories of the anenomes getting sucked up the pumps and lots of little pieces of the anenome being shot through the tank hitting the fish or worse being eaten by the fish.

it is now a quarter of its side but is eating well and slowy growing. it has also not moved for a very long time which i assume means it is settled.

i have had a marine for about 3 years but believe it or not my old tank sprang a leak and i had to change everything over to a new tank....lucky for me the shop up graded me to any size tank i wanted free of charge for the inconvience so i took full advantage. unfortunately alot of my corals died off and it has not got back to it usual self and is rathet bare in the coral department but im slowly building it up again.
 
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