Begone demons! This is a home no more!

Have you ever added a critter and instantly regreted it?

  • Yes

    Votes: 42 76.4%
  • No

    Votes: 7 12.7%
  • It was a "pleasant" surprise

    Votes: 6 10.9%

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Someshmuk

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Hallelujah the demons are gone! So... Have you ever added a creature into your tank and regretted it later?

I got Peppermint shrimps to remove some aptasia I had on a frag. They did their job surprisingly and cleaned up all the aptasia.

But after they got settled... They got real handsy with any coral I've target fed. Today, they were out of hand and ripped food out of almost every coral they could grab their hands on and then tore up a ricordeas mouth.

So you can say that was the final straw. After 20 minutes and relocating my rockscape, they are now in a 1 gallon fish bowl while I figure out what I wanna do about them.

Begone! You are no longer welcome here!

IMG_20200220_230043.jpg
 

krash7172

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File fish. Eradicated aiptasia in days. But now it's looking for more meat. He's keeping my kenyas and paly's in check. The only downside is that he's picking on the few rock anems I have. He leaves the tube anem alone. Overall great addition.

Edit: voted pleasant surprise :)
 

ScottR

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Hallelujah the demons are gone! So... Have you ever added a creature into your tank and regretted it later?

I got Peppermint shrimps to remove some aptasia I had on a frag. They did their job surprisingly and cleaned up all the aptasia.

But after they got settled... They got real handsy with any coral I've target fed. Today, they were out of hand and ripped food out of almost every coral they could grab their hands on and then tore up a ricordeas mouth.

So you can say that was the final straw. After 20 minutes and relocating my rockscape, they are now in a 1 gallon fish bowl while I figure out what I wanna do about them.

Begone! You are no longer welcome here!

IMG_20200220_230043.jpg
How did you catch them? I’ve been trying forever. I picked up one in my hand and got it out and it jumped right back in!!!!
 

ScottR

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Oh no ;Hilarious ;Hilarious

I’ve heard banggai cardinal fish will eat them lol
Are you serious? I highly doubt that lol. A hawk fish might but not sure if I want to let it go nuts on other shrimps.
 

35ppt

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Hallelujah the demons are gone! So... Have you ever added a creature into your tank and regretted it later?

I got Peppermint shrimps to remove some aptasia I had on a frag. They did their job surprisingly and cleaned up all the aptasia.

But after they got settled... They got real handsy with any coral I've target fed. Today, they were out of hand and ripped food out of almost every coral they could grab their hands on and then tore up a ricordeas mouth.

So you can say that was the final straw. After 20 minutes and relocating my rockscape, they are now in a 1 gallon fish bowl while I figure out what I wanna do about them.

Begone! You are no longer welcome here!

IMG_20200220_230043.jpg
I had the same problem with a pair of skunks, I started target feeding the shrimp before feeding all the coral. Was never a problem again.
 

35ppt

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Agreed, my skunk cleaner is a greedy voracious monster!
When I first got them they would go nuts and walk upside down on the water surface trying to get at the food before the fish, but as I fed the shrimp more they calmed way down.
 

Magellan

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When I first got them they would go nuts and walk upside down on the water surface trying to get at the food before the fish, but as I fed the shrimp more they calmed way down.
I gave up target feeding and switched to broadcasting because of that tireless scavenger ;Dead
 

ScottR

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Google it there are posts! Maybe just small ones though
Looked it up. Weird. Cardinals usually aren’t that big and swim at the top of the tank and shrimps are down in the rocks. But I can’t get cardinals. The other fish will bully them to death for sure. A flame hawk is on my list though. At least they’re chill most of the time.
 

Thub

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Looked it up. Weird. Cardinals usually aren’t that big and swim at the top of the tank and shrimps are down in the rocks. But I can’t get cardinals. The other fish will bully them to death for sure. A flame hawk is on my list though. At least they’re chill most of the time.
Cardinals have shockingly big mouths, and are way quicker than they seem. Mine goes absolutely nuts on Mysis shrimp. If he got too hungry, I could see him going for a medium peppermint shrimp who was being careless.
 

Indytraveler83

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I was in the early stages of reefkeepking and battling a bad "uglies" problem. I got a decent sized hermit crab to help.

He ate everything. Algae, diatoms, acans, zoa's, gsp, blennies, gobies...

Lesson learned, only buy hermits that stay small!
 

Bapeluso

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Had an aiptasia eating filefish, was good for 6 months, then got hungry for my big fleshy acans. Had a hippo tang for 8 months and was good, then decided to get hungry for my big fleshy acans. Had an emporer angel (this ones partially my fault because I wanted to see if hed work if I kept him well fed), decided he liked my big fleshy red acans. Got a cleaner wrasse, immediately went after my big fleshy red acans. Dont know why, but they all decided to take chunks from the one coral in my tank. If they go after that one coral, they gotta go. It's the fiance's favorite and happy wife happy life. Its caused me to get really good with the bottle trick
 
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Someshmuk

Someshmuk

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How did you catch them? I’ve been trying forever. I picked up one in my hand and got it out and it jumped right back in!!!!

Haha that's awesome that you could do that! I've never tried to catch one of those guys bare handed.

I have a fluval 13.5 so doing a rock teardown isn't as hard as a one of the larger tanks. But I used those brine shrimp nets and a gravel tool to herd the shrimp to the side of the tank, lined up the net with the shrimp and slowly captured it.
IMG_20200221_065815.jpg

There were three behaviors I noticed when I was wrangling them.

The first one is that they're docile and unaware of the net and don't know to sprint away, if you miss you get the 2nd behavior where they jet around in every which way.

The third is when you've got two tools in front and beyond them, they seemed to try to walk around them instead of jet way like they usually do. Which was significantly easier to catch to be honest.

I've tried the water bottle method but I came back to my clown fish trying to roost in it but I've heard a quite a lot of success using that method. It's where you cut a bottle in half, invert the top and insert it into the other piece of the bottle. Then you'd put in some bait like silverfish or some sort of meaty food and drop it into your tank.
 
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Someshmuk

Someshmuk

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File fish. Eradicated aiptasia in days. But now it's looking for more meat. He's keeping my kenyas and paly's in check. The only downside is that he's picking on the few rock anems I have. He leaves the tube anem alone. Overall great addition.

Edit: voted pleasant surprise :)
Had an aiptasia eating filefish, was good for 6 months, then got hungry for my big fleshy acans. Had a hippo tang for 8 months and was good, then decided to get hungry for my big fleshy acans. Had an emporer angel (this ones partially my fault because I wanted to see if hed work if I kept him well fed), decided he liked my big fleshy red acans. Got a cleaner wrasse, immediately went after my big fleshy red acans. Dont know why, but they all decided to take chunks from the one coral in my tank. If they go after that one coral, they gotta go. It's the fiance's favorite and happy wife happy life. Its caused me to get really good with the bottle trick

I've noticed with fish you have quite a mixed bag of results. I had a clown goby that went rogue just a few days of being in the tank and decided my favias polyps looked delicious. I would say that catching him was significantly easier then an invert but that was before I put in all my frag racks so he really couldn't hide anywhere. But all of my 3 fish are model citizens lol.
 
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Someshmuk

Someshmuk

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I had the same problem with a pair of skunks, I started target feeding the shrimp before feeding all the coral. Was never a problem again.
Agreed, my skunk cleaner is a greedy voracious monster!
I gave up target feeding and switched to broadcasting because of that tireless scavenger ;Dead

I didn't have much success with appeasing the Peppermint shrimp with food. I'd give each shrimp a small piece of dried shrimp and they'd grab it and be happy for a hot minute going to town on those shrimp bits.... Then they realized they could have more food straight from a coral's mouth...

I have a hunch that if a critter learns it can eat your coral or have a good meal messing with your coral, they'll never forget they can do it and you end up fighting a neverending battle against them.
 

Bapeluso

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I've noticed with fish you have quite a mixed bag of results. I had a clown goby that went rogue just a few days of being in the tank and decided my favias polyps looked delicious. I would say that catching him was significantly easier then an invert but that was before I put in all my frag racks so he really couldn't hide anywhere. But all of my 3 fish are model citizens lol.
Not to mention took em all back to the lfs and they dont mess with a thing there. Even had a large sailfin that would get into with my blonde naso. Took him back to the lfs and hes is currently in with a blonde naso the same size, no caves in the tank, and theyve had zero issues.
 

RayDRoot

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Six line wrasse. Killed my flasher within a week. The six line died a year and a half later. Yay!.
 

S2G

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Dang clown fish & neon blue damsel. These 2 are major pains. The percula attacks everyone including my emporer which is really getting old. The damsel steals food & tail slaps my eel whenever it pops its head out. Impossible to catch. I don't think the clown even sleeps.
 

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