Often, people who are new to the hobby go out and mix things normally frowned upon. I love to do this, but I don't go about it aimlessly.
To start off, I setup a temp holding tank inline with my system. I call it the conference room. Here is where I experiment. I will put a small frag of every coral I have in the tank and what ever fish I plan on mixing. Say I have the want for a valentini, but I don't want him to eat corals or inverts. So I put him in with a shrimp and some frags and see what happens over a month (or less if he starts nipping). Since puffers are on the smarter side of dumb, they can be trained to an extent. I am acclimating one now to my reef. He gained interest in a zoa patch, but I quickly corrected him with a quick feeding of mysis. It took about 3 times, but he finally ignores the corals except to sleep on them. He is also housed with a purple striped dotty back that I accidentally got....the dotty has nipped at him once, but quickly stopped when he went in defense mode. He is like a black hawk helicoptor when he is mad, quite intimidating for a 1 inch baby.
If he never stopped eating the corals, iwould have swapped him out with another one of the same species. I found a few good ways to prevent this. The younger the fish, the less habbits it develops, unless the fish was raised in an aquarium with no corals, then it most likely won't notice them either.
I haven't tried doing this with more aggressive fish yet, only a niger who successfully lived in the reef until he jumped tank.
He actually let old coral banded clean him. Now that was cool.
I am not recommending this 'fish whispering' technique to the light hearted/small walleted/inexperienced hobbyist, but to those of you with the means to do so, here is a good way to test the fish before losing a nice coral. Remember, fish have instincts and they will use them. It takes vigourous work to make a fish change his ways, since they don't comprehend nearly as much as even a cat admits to, which imo are even harder to train. Our cat high fives, lays, and rolls, and that was enough to amaze me. Dogs are way too easy. We trained our dog to bark to 1,2, and 3. Distiguish shades of treats, play dead, sick the cat (playfully pin them). And soo much more it makes her crazy when she tries to do them herself lol. She will bark up a storm, sit, then play dead and hop right back up barking....expecting a coookie. Sorry dog, only when I say cookie do you get a cookie.
To start off, I setup a temp holding tank inline with my system. I call it the conference room. Here is where I experiment. I will put a small frag of every coral I have in the tank and what ever fish I plan on mixing. Say I have the want for a valentini, but I don't want him to eat corals or inverts. So I put him in with a shrimp and some frags and see what happens over a month (or less if he starts nipping). Since puffers are on the smarter side of dumb, they can be trained to an extent. I am acclimating one now to my reef. He gained interest in a zoa patch, but I quickly corrected him with a quick feeding of mysis. It took about 3 times, but he finally ignores the corals except to sleep on them. He is also housed with a purple striped dotty back that I accidentally got....the dotty has nipped at him once, but quickly stopped when he went in defense mode. He is like a black hawk helicoptor when he is mad, quite intimidating for a 1 inch baby.
If he never stopped eating the corals, iwould have swapped him out with another one of the same species. I found a few good ways to prevent this. The younger the fish, the less habbits it develops, unless the fish was raised in an aquarium with no corals, then it most likely won't notice them either.
I haven't tried doing this with more aggressive fish yet, only a niger who successfully lived in the reef until he jumped tank.
He actually let old coral banded clean him. Now that was cool.
I am not recommending this 'fish whispering' technique to the light hearted/small walleted/inexperienced hobbyist, but to those of you with the means to do so, here is a good way to test the fish before losing a nice coral. Remember, fish have instincts and they will use them. It takes vigourous work to make a fish change his ways, since they don't comprehend nearly as much as even a cat admits to, which imo are even harder to train. Our cat high fives, lays, and rolls, and that was enough to amaze me. Dogs are way too easy. We trained our dog to bark to 1,2, and 3. Distiguish shades of treats, play dead, sick the cat (playfully pin them). And soo much more it makes her crazy when she tries to do them herself lol. She will bark up a storm, sit, then play dead and hop right back up barking....expecting a coookie. Sorry dog, only when I say cookie do you get a cookie.
