Flame angel Poll, please respond if you've kept this species

[dizzy]

Here's a look at my trio of flames. Notice the Royal gramma and black cap that live next to each other at the top of the tank.

 

[iomegas_reef]

iomegas_reef,
Ha! You are very wrong! There is more than one species of angel that more often than not, are reef safe. Genicanthus sp. being the most reliable in this regard. After that, you have Centropyge argi which is the closest thing to a 100% reef safe dwarf angel. (I have them in all my reefs, a great reef fish!) Next to that you C. acanthops which amost always behaves. The coral beauty does well for many people as well.
There are even large angels that can be kept in reef tanks with caution, these include P. navarchus, P. imperator. Many people keep regal angels as well. I myself have a young imperator in my SPS tank, and he bothers nothing. Nothing is all time, and there are always exceptions.
As far as flame angels go, far more than "one or two" turn out to be reef safe. I myself know 3 people who are keeping them without any problems. My LFS has 4 in a large reef which don't bother anything as well. I have one in my 150 which isn't bothering my SPS.
I've been keeping angels for almost 20 years, what I'm trying to glean is some information from other keepers to see if their findings are similar to my own with this species.
Honestly, nothing personal, but I find posts like yours annoying and a bit hard to suffer. Authoritative, yet completely false, with no empirical data or knowledge behind it. I'm looking for experiences here, not guidance - bad guidance at that! :roll:
Regards
Jim

Sure thing George. I posted what I have been told. Apparently I was wrong. Plus every flame angel I tried keeping nipped mostly at everything I had, so I was posting from experiance.

 

[Anonymous]

dizzy, that's exactly the mix I saw at the Stephen Birch aquarium (and their black cap was the BIGGEST most HONKIN' black cap piece of meat I've ever seen!). They got along famously, too.

 

[Anonymous]

Not enuff people quarantine their fish. I will come back to this point in a minute.
First I would like to say that I believe flame angels can be reef safe fish, having kept them in a reef without any visible problems. I believe that DIET is the key. When people mention having flames that attacked their soft corals, there is no info given on what sort of diets these fish were given, which makes it hard to narrow the field and discover reasons... Also, individual fish have individual needs, just like all animals, some require more protein (etc etc) than others. Male, female? Do males eat more? Do females need extra calories? There are no studies, so who knows. What I do know is that the number of people who actually believe that brine shrimp is an acceptable sole food is staggering... 8O
Newly bought angels should be quarantined for weeks, and fed properly to reduce the chance of nipping at corals. One can always add a couple of frags to the q-tankwith the new angels to see if they attack the corals right away. Most fish that are used to a certain diet will simply eat what they are already used to, and most times will only switch foods once they start to starve a little. Given the choice between a newly introduced food and a coral they recognize means they will be reef nippers unless they can be "trained" while in quarantine to learn what the new food is.
Patience helps.
I would be interested to know if people that feed properly (and have been feeding properly for some time) also have troubles with reef chewers.

 

[Anonymous]

Not to bump an old thread (OK, that's what I'm doing), but if anyone's doing what I'm doing now (doing a search and research), they might want to hear my experience. I had a Flame that only picked at Stylophora, in a tank with SPS, a couple of small LPS (favia, acans) and others (zoas, rics). He got returned after dismantling my tank to catch him...