red coris wrasse question

[cyacop]

i got a red coris wrasse from my lfs with the understanding that it would do ok being around corals. i did not have any corals at the time of purchase but i visited a friend of mine and he fragged me a piece of his green star polyp. everytime i get home in the afternoon the frags are in a different spot and they look torn up. he is not going to allow corals in my tank is he?

[tsr770]

My guess is he moves it around trying to look under it, my yellow coris makes sure I have everything glued down to something he cant move

[cyacop]

so its safe to purchase some corals?

[TWallace]

They will not eat or (intentionally) damage corals. But as you've noticed, they do like to flip loose frags over in search of tasty morsels under them. Just glue your frags down and they'll be fine.

Snails, hermit crabs and small shrimp may not fair as well versus the wrasse. I have a juvenile in my tank, have had it for about 4 months. He leaves my snails, hermits and shrimp alone, but he's only about 2 and a half inches long now. I believe they eventually get up to around a foot and a half in the ocean, though I've never seen one in captivity larger than around 7 inches. Absolutely gorgeous when they're adults, one of the top 5 most beautiful fish in my opinion.

[cyacop]

agreed on the beauty. mine is a 6 inch adult. he is stunning . so how do i nail things down to keep him from flipping a new piece of coral when i get it?

[museumguy]

My advice to you is to get rid of him. I have a yellowtail corris in my reef tank that was not put there my me, and I've spent so many hours trying to catch him to get him out.

I fragged a bunch of softies and super glued the plugs into my tank. The corris and a pink tailed trigger just destroyed the plugs. First ripping the corals off then the actual super glued rocks and then ripping the glued plugs off the rock. It was like a game for them.

I've put 100's of snails into the tank, the corris just mows em down. I've watched that fish pick up rocks that probably weighed 10 times or more what he did. They like to flick the rocks up into the current and see if any bugs or other goodies fall off. Very pretty but IMO better suited for a fish only system.

Also, don't house them with any blue spotted stingrays, apparently he originally got moved to the reef tank because he nearly harassed our large stingray to death.

[Grouperhead]

My coris leaves snails and hermits alone fwiw

<a href="http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/Hanan003/?action=view&current=fish005.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y226/Hanan003/fish005.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

It's been fun watching him change :D