What a killer tank! How has your conspic angel been in the tank? How long have you had it, and does it get along w the regal? You seem to have just about every type of coral in that reef so I'm curious to hear about how "nippy" the angel is. I see you get pretty amazing PE during the daylight so I'm assuming the fish don't bother the corals.
The Conspic was a great citizen for a year, and then one day it wasn’t. Putting that angels in a mixed reef was quite the gamble, and was worth it.
It never touched a single tenuis once. Ever.
It was fine with sps, just occasional polyp nips on some acros, I never rolled the dice with meaty LPS. One day the angel did learn through boredom that acro mucuous tastes good.
Once that happened the damage started to spread more nipping of tips for a number of acropora colonies, then mushrooms were on the menu as well. With a WWC biohazard bounce being lunch before I noticed in a day. But mostly the acro sampling became too much. If I had colonies that I didn’t care about as much I would be able to stomach the sampling.
I’ve tried many angelfish in reef tanks, all with varying success w/ different types of coral. The regal was phenomenal, absolutely loves eating zoa like skittles. But when angels become adults besides some species (dwarf, genicanthus, etc) ... something clicks, and they look at the grazing options differently. As they get bigger the damage potential of those choppers becomes more legit and usually harder to stomach for reefers.
No way was I selling the Conspic, so what else to do? I set up a second waterbox tank and have a fun theme lined up for it.
For the waterbox peninsula, it’s still undergoing a transformation. More pics will come as everything comes back to potential of recent change. But both bigger changes for fish and coral. With some coral rising again without the regal angel...
Funny this angel post comes along just now. Been scratching my head as to why a couple of small colonies are losing PE and the occasional tip. That coral beauty has to be 7 years old by now. I've seen her poking around in some rasta zoas but have acres to spare so no biggie.
Yesterday saw her poking around on the new collector rack and that is a no-no. I have a great place to rehome her, it is just going to take hours to trap her.
Man that's a bummer it started munching. I hope my emperor doesn't decide to do that, but I'd heard they are pretty sps safe. I'd be interested in hearing your plan for the angel's new tank.
Emperors unfortunately at some point usually become too destructive. If I was stuck in a glass box I’d eventually snack on anything. But even if they are mostly well behaved around choice coral like acropora, they just get too big & the power from that bite can become entire tips of acro eaten.
If you don’t care a whole lot about the coral then no big deal and all will be ok.