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[Reef Pilot]

First, thanks everyone for the kind replies.

Have just heard about fragging, and may have to do it. My tank is pretty full to the surface with corals. That big one in the centre is almost two feet across. Taking a knife to live animals seems a little squeamish to me, but I guess that is how it is done. Will research it a lot more before doing anything, though.

I don't have much for custodian animals, though, no crabs or shrimp. I have a large Green Bird Wrasse, and he rips apart any shrimp or crab in about 10 seconds. So have to do a lot of manual cleaning which is a lot of work. I do have a Lawnmower Blenny in there, though, and he is pretty fat, eating algae. And my Yellow Tang is constantly grazing on algae, so I guess that helps a bit.

RP

[intarsiabox]

Welcome to Canreef! Mexican Turbo snails make really good custodians as well I find short spined sea urchins do a good job as well. Fish usually leave both of these alone.

[BlueTang<3]

I would keep and eye on the Mertensii Butterflyfish, don't think they are too good with corals usually. He should also be picking at the aiptasia everyone i had devoured it.




http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/p...273&pcatid=273

[Reef Pilot]

They are actually Pearlscale Butterfly fish. I had them in a QT tank for a few weeks and just moved them to the big tank. I would place a live rock full of aiptasia into the QT from the big tank, and they cleaned each one out in a couple days. I didn't feed them anything else, so trained them to eat the aiptasia that way.

They are already pecking away at the aiptaisia in the main tank now after a couple days. They had to get over the Yellow Tang harassing them the first day, but they are now hunting and pecking away at the aiptasia in my main tank. So will see how it goes. I noticed they don't touch the big ones, though, waving away in the water flow right in front of them, but seem to go after the hard to get ones hiding in their holes. I hope they eventually go after the big ones, too, as there must be hundreds in my tank.

One thing I noticed with these Butterfly fish, they like to play follow the leader. When one finds an aiptaisia, the others come by and also get in on the action. Sometimes, one pulls a whole aiptasia out, but it is too big to swallow, so they all then pull at it like chickens going after worms. Quite interesting to watch.

RP