LPS and Harlequin Filefish

[LadyTang2]

Will the fish pick at lps or sps for that matter? What can I do to make it more reef friendly, just feed enough? Avoid alltogether?

 

[ecamden]

I cant say but my matted filefish destroyed one of my milliepora colonies

 

[Angel_Anthias lover]

I cant say for certain, but i doubt they would eat lps. Their mouths are designed for plucking polyps from the sps structures and i dont think theyd recognise lps as food, though maybe they could if theyre hungry enough.

But this is not a fish you should get if you dont want corals eaten, they need some sps corals to survive and get through acclimation to tank life. It wont not eat sps if its there, but if you have a lot of colonies the damage will be spread out and should go unnoticed, especially with extra feedings of frozen and other fare.

 

[Angel_Anthias lover]

@YeetReef and @Sallstrom have experience with them

 

[Sallstrom]

Will the fish pick at lps or sps for that matter? What can I do to make it more reef friendly, just feed enough? Avoid alltogether?

Our two ate polyps of many Acropora species, plus Seriatopora and Stylophora species. Never saw them eat anything else, even though we had many different corals including LPS together with them. We had ours in a really large mixed reef tank with lots of corals, so they had enough food. (link under my profile)

Look into captive breed Orange Spotted Filefish. That is probably a better idea then trying to teach a wild caught one to eat something other then polyps.
From what I’ve seen, it’s hard to get them to survive and eat other food.