The deal with keping moorish idols is they require a reef environment but are not technically reef safeIt really comes down to what you require to call your tank a "reef". They need the microfauna and algaes you get in a tank full of LR with full spectrum lighting. They will eat some types of corals like zoo's and anything that is soft and fleshy like an open brain. They will not bother anything noxious like a euphylia so you can keep frogs, hammers and torches with them. They won't eat any "garbage" like colt or mushrooms (who would?). With other softies you just have to experment, some will be hit or miss with any given fish. SPS are flat out. So if you want the idol you just have to more or less build the tank around it, trying new things to see what will and won't work.
At the aquarium in Long Beach there are several fat & healthy idols in the outdoor small shark pool. An aquarist there told me they never had any luck with them in the indoor tanks but in the pool they thrive. The belief is that natural sunlight made the difference, either indirectly by the nutritional quality of the algae that grows in the pond or directly through direct sythesis of vitmain D ( many animals do this ). In my own experience I had an idol for 18 months in a 125 reef that got 2-3 hours of direct sunlight every morning. Sadly the pump failed one day in August and the entire tank was lost, but up untl then the idol seemed perfectly healthy.
Yes Brian, "I had"
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Originally Posted by originalsd
