"Angels" or "Devils"

[gwaco]

what i'm after is experiances from those whom keep or have kept large angels in their reef tanks . by large angels i mean from the following families .pomancanthus , holacanthus , and maybe chaetodontoplus and genicanthhus families. please none from the centropyge family .i would like some feed back on your good or bad experiances , whether you still have it or removed it . if removed why ? , from clam nipping , coral nipping , etc. also it would help if you could state the size of the tank , and the principles in the tank ( sps , soft , mixed etc ) .

[partobe]

Hi Gary I had a queen for 3 yrs great fish. I had noproblems with her but lost her when we had that big black out. My tank was a fowlr 120 gallon.
Patrick

[gwaco]

thanks patrick , sorry about the loss ! so i assume that their were no corals or clams since it was fowlr ? also something else i thought of ! if you could state the size and whether it was a juvinile , intermeadiate , or adult phase ! again thanks for sharing !

[partobe]

sure Gary np She was a baby when I bought her and when she passed I would say about 7 inches. Her tank mate were a dog face puffer and a Hippo. No clams or corals I had some snails and hermits but the dog face did away with them.

[110galreef]

I had small flame angel that turned on me after about 8 months and started nipping all my fleshy LPS.......

It is gone now!

I have 110 gallon mixed reef

Good luck w/ the Large as they are more prone to eat corals & clams than the small ones!

[gwaco]

come on ! the best i get is two responses ! some of you have had to try it .

[Twitterbait]

my queen picked at my xenia...

[Casey]

Lets just say I dont know why they call them Angels

[Hardhead Cat]

I had a six-bar angel for 9 years in a FOWLR tank (135 gallon), when she passed I changed my tank to a reef tank. I still have a rock beauty in there that's retarded, he thinks he's a tang but he doesn't nip anything.

In my experience you have about an 80-20 chance that the angels will work in your reef tank - 80 against, 20 for. They usually don't, especially when they get older. Also, angels are susceptible to all sorts of parasites and bacterial problems. I love them though! They are beautiful fish.

HHC

[Weatherman]

I have a baby Queen Angel, about 5” in length, in my 155g tank. It ate all the zoanthids in my tank within the first few weeks, and has now developed a taste for toadstool leathers. I pretty much accepted, before I got the Angel, that my soft coral tank was going to slowly transition to a fish-only.

Queen Angel’s are beautiful fish, and I’m going to keep it for as long as I can.

[gwaco]

well let me try and explain my thinking alittle bit . like all fish, some seem to get labeled pretty quick only to have that label changed as time goes on . i would like(hope) to think that this is true of the large angels . from what we have been told (by vertually everyone ) is that angels can't be kept in a reef tank with-out doing harm , then came along the pygmies and all of a sudden they were in the tanks and every-one was happy . they attained the status of "reef safe" but large angels are no more of a corallivores than the pygmies . yes a few spiecies are ,but the majority of angels graze on organisms on the rocks or sand . is it possible that because we have it drilled in our heads that they will feed on corals that we obssess with keeping our eyes only focussed on them in the tanks , then the minute it is seen sampling a coral or clam we immediatly stamp it as a coral killer and dismantle everything to get it out ( and probally end up doing more damage in the process than what the angel did in the first place ) then we post how this fish was such a terror !
maybe if we look deeper into why, maybe there are many other factors at work than the fish being a coral eater . tank conditions may be a factor ,feeding may be a factor , poor water conditions , maybe just boredom for the fish ? how many of us have heard the stories - " is my 55 big enough for a queen " , " i just bought this rock beauty angel but its not eating !" and so on . maybe something as simple as the amount of flow we now put on our tanks , or the giant skimmers we put on our tanks which allow us to actually feed the fish more , keeping their bellies full so they don't have to "sample" other foods . so many things have changed in the last ten years that maybe some of the horror stories can be changed to success stories! i have watched all of my tangs "sample " different things including clam mantles , but i bet most don't even give the tangs a second thought in there tanks , because we have been told " they are reef safe " but try watching them or some other "reef safe " fish and you may be surprised at what you see .
i hope that i am not coming of as sounding preachy , and writing this may just be a way of settling my nerves after adding the angel to my tank , but i do hope i am right , and if not i will be the first to come back and admit i made a mistake !
so do we have anymore large angel in the reef tank stories ?

[gwaco]

Originally Posted by Weatherman

I have a baby Queen Angel, about 5” in length, in my 155g tank. It ate all the zoanthids in my tank within the first few weeks, and has now developed a taste for toadstool leathers. I pretty much accepted, before I got the Angel, that my soft coral tank was going to slowly transition to a fish-only.

Queen Angel’s are beautiful fish, and I’m going to keep it for as long as I can.

sorry jack , you posted while i was writing my speech . do you think that its possible that it just started sampling out of boredom or was just predisposed with an aquired taste for corals ! have you noticed it nibbling on anything else other than soft corals ? are there any clams in the 155 ?

[Weatherman]

Large angels are well known to love to eat zoanthids, so I'm not the least bit surprised the zoos were wiped out fast. I'm a bit surprised about the angel eating sarcophytons, but the sarcophyton had just split, so there was a fresh wound exposed that was apparently pretty tastey. The angel hasn't touched any of the other sarcophytons in the tank. There are no clams in the tank, just some star polyps, a couple of ricordia, a kenya tree and the sarcos.

Tangs, Angels and Rabbits constantly nibble on stuff. The smaller the tank, the greater the impact. My Powder Blue likes Xenia and completely consumed a one-square-foot patch. The Powder Blue will also take an occasional nip out of my clam, but doesn't cause significant damage. I have a Coral Beauty Angel, which has never touched any of my coral.

I guess the bottom line is that there are shades of grey when it comes to the "reef safe" designation. However, on average, large angels are still much more risky fish for reef tanks than pygmy angels, tangs and rabbits. The smaller the tank, the greater the risk to any individual coral.

[Geoff]

i have had and have seen Genicanthus in reef tanks. i had a G. melanospilis for many months in my reef with SPS and clams and never a problem. i lost it because at the time i was running a DSB and was not feeding enough. i hate when i loose a fish to something like my own stupidity.

i would not hesitate at all with recommending a Genicanthus spp. to you. i know Spanky kept Malcomb (Queen Angel) forever in a reef tank, but it was SPS only i think. you might want to PM him if he does not see this thread today.

G~

[gwaco]

qoute/
i would not hesitate at all with recommending a Genicanthus spp. to you. i know Spanky kept Malcomb (Queen Angel) forever in a reef tank, but it was SPS only i think. you might want to PM him if he does not see this thread today.
i'm quite sure he already placed a phone call !