Which fish to get?

Local stores have them for well under half that cost.  I've had some.  (I know you were kidding Jon).  Diverdan- with your tank, you could get anything.  A better question would have been "what should I not buy" because I would recommend you go buy whatever you want. 

Adam

Rich - I've seen them at both Bird World and Mountain Shadow for around $35.  I think the last time I was at the Pet Factory they had a few too.

I would give up the flame angel for the right coral or price, I was hoping to use the trade in value towards the new fish. The angel is very healthy and about 3 to 4 inches long. IT has nibbled at a few corals, but I can't see any visible damage, except my toadstool leather has not extended its polyps in about a week.

Now I just have to figure out how to catch.

I'm surprised at how quick everyone just agreed that the fish should be replaced.

Why is it wanting to eat the coral? What is missing in it's diet or in the tank? I'll bet that there isn't enough algae! I'll eat my hat if that's not the answer. Diverdan, You have three tangs in a 75 gallon tank! Unless your tank is a couple years old and you have a healthy growth of algae, your fish are begging for it. Wouldn't you rather lose a tang or two than the gorgeous Flame Angel. Is it likely your wife feels the same?

I don't care if you lose the Angel, but just wanted to educate everyone about what's really going on in your tank.

P.S. Ryan, when you bring the fertilizer can you also bring the fish trap?

So, Mark, what you're saying is a well-fed flame angel won't eat corals?  I've suspected that, but I've just read too many people say their dwarf angel nibbles, so I haven't wanted to risk it.

I certainly don't have enough algae growing on my rocks yet, but would a daily feeding of nori along with my daily feeding of frozen foods be sufficient?  Would there be anything else I would need to feed?

Thanks, Mark!

-Tom

The following advice may only be worth the paper it's written on!

An extremely algae free tank may be stressful to algae eaters even if feeding on Norii. That's not their natural food and as previously stated, they pick all day. They pick until they get the food they want and then it starts all over the next day! We are lucky that many of the fish we keep are so omnivorous and that there is such a variety of foods available today.

Although I too feed some flake food, my opinion is that prepared flake and pellet foods are mostly filler. It is like feeding bread to ducks. They still need to eat natural live greens or they get sick.

Norii is good but probably doesn't satisfy the Flame Angel as well as it does the Tangs. There is a soft algae and bacterial slime that grows daily on almost all the surfaces especially the rocks. It is almost invisible to us but algae eating fish sort of "lick" it off the surfaces daily. If there are too many fish competing for this, they start to lick at other surfaces that have other sources of algae. Some of those sources are coral that may be disposing of some zooxanthellae along with daily mucous.

I believe this mucous is what any dwarf angel is eating if it is like all the others I have ever seen. It is possible that without any seeming provocation, the coral polyps themselves will become food. But my opinion is that the provocation was the hobbyist adding too many fish or too little nutrients for algal growth or too little surface for algal growth, or the incorrect lighting (too dark or too bright) to grow the natural slime they like.

The same principle can be seen in how we used to be told to stay away from Butterflyfish because they ate coral polyps. Well, now we are seeing more and more people able to successfully keep some of the Butterflyfish. These hobbyists are allowing their reefs to grow more naturally and "lo and behold" the Butterfly's are not eating the coral!

It wasn't too long ago that people couldn't keep coral alive because they were trying to keep tanks too "clean".

Algae does not have to overgrow and become "a tank full of algae" as stated in an earlier post, but we might want to accept that algae is one of our tanks "best friends" and does serve a useful purpose and need not be frightening nor an eyesore.

Many hobbyists keep a beautiful growth of caulerpa macroalgae. I enjoy my red grape algae and am happy that it doesn't require harvesting like caulerpa. A small mat of bright green cyanobacteria in a friends tank looks nice, is serving a useful purpose and may never get out of control It's been there for over six months now. If it does start to cover more surfaces we will just stop feeding for a few days to a week and the tank may again surprise us at how well it is able to self-correct.

One of the marvelous things about a refugium is that the algae can take over there and be allowed to do it's job while the main tank stays pristine and manicured the way some of us like to see things.

My 2 cents worth.