Reef-Safe Damsels????

[Speedy]

Sorry about the leave of absence. Boy have things changed (good job Matt)! Not to mention the member list. Well the topic here is sure to be a fire starter.

Is there really such a thing as a reef safe damsel? They are usually classified as reef-safe fish. However, I saw with my own eyes how they pestered 2 brain corals to death.

Here's the story, my friend has 125G reef setup, 7 yrs and still going. He moved from Miami up to the Cape Coral area. Now this was nice, because there has been quite the boom in the reefing community up here and he had a nice reception. As a matter of fact a friend of mine who had just finished cycling his 72 gal BF, handed him the 5 damsels he used to do the job. He took the damsels happily thinking "No harm just some simple fish, I don't mind. I like the main focus of my tank to be my corals anyways..." Well long story short, the damsels went haywire, they started picking at one brain and in a matter of 2-4 days they killed it. At the site of this he attempted to remove the damsels, he got 3 of the 5 murderers. The two that remained took vengance on a huge Wellsophyllia brain, it's mouth alone must have measured 4", it's total length must have been of at least 12-14". It would eat whole silversides. And those little bastards started picking at it till it died of frustration.

Now wait, this is not an issue of species. The damsels were: Blue, yellow tails, domino, and striped. Species my friends is not the issue. Clowns we know can do this as well due to their frisky moods. It could not have been too long ago that we saw a video of a clown desperately hosting a brain coral.

So this is a heads up, and hopefully some debate will come of this post.