Thanks, I did exactly that.
I thought I'd put in a little update here. Sad news: My so-called "H. diphreutes" was NOT, I say, NOT a diphreutes. Rather, he was a polyp-eating, coral-munching, H. acuminatus demon. Funny thing was, he never acted out when I was near the tank. Guess he was too busy begging for food. But when I wasn't in sight, he tied on a little fishy bib and went to town on the SPS smörgåsbord I had apparently laid out for him. My corals have taken a beating, let me tell you. To sum up, he has obliterated:
My orange birdsnest, my Red Birdsnest, and 99% of my Green polyp birdsnest (one of my favorites). He tore apart my Rainbow Stylophora, a good portion of my green Poci, and ate ALL the polyps off of the yellow scroll coral. He also ate all the exposed flesh (but interestingly, not the polyps) of my green pagoda. He destroyed a beautiful and rather large purple acro. And finally, he powered through some purple joker palys and some random zoas.
Obviously this didn't happen overnight, but neither was it terribly slow. This was all the product of about a month's time. Because I never saw him doing it, I thought I had a coral-eating worm...especially because it seemed like much of the damage would occur at night. I spent a few late night hours observing the tank, but I never saw any worm or other nocturnal critter chowing down. The butterfly, it seems, never sleeps. He would constantly be awake and begging at the glass during these nighttime stakeouts.
I finally realized what was going on when I was far away from the tank. Although I was still within eyeshot, the fish didn't know I was watching, so I got to see his true colors in all their terrible glory. He'd cruise from coral to coral, hitting each poor specimen with a machine gun "powpowpowpow" before moving off. I was floored. And furious. This is one ungentle butterfly.
So, his living arrangements have been reassigned. Thanks to a gent who lent me his fish trap, I spent 90 minutes yesterday "fishing" in my tank. It was an onerous task, but less so IMHO than breaking down the whole bloody tank. I moved him into the bedroom tank for now, so he ought to be happy for a while.
In the meantime, since I finally got him out, I decided to revamp a couple items in the aquarium. First, I can now put the MACNA purchases into the big tank (hooray)! Second, I'm going to remove my birdsnest skeletons and try to regrow them if there's any tissue I could possibly frag. Finally, I'm going to do some work on the tank itself: I have two WP40's that should be arriving in the next 2 weeks which will SIGNIFICANTLY increase the flow in my tank. I have a TLF Kalk stirrer on order so I can convert my ATO into a kalkwasser doser (hoping this will also increase my pH a little; it's always on the low side to me). And to top it all off, I'm going to rebuild my canopy and increase the height to get the LEDs a little farther away from the water surface. I've been frustrated by the difficulty in moving the lights back and forth when I'm working in the tank, and a taller canopy will also allow me to install clear netting screens over the top. Considering that I may be getting a very rare fish in the future.....the net top is 100% essential to me at this point.
And no....I will not say what rare fish.
Because at this point it's all "if's" and "maybe's." But the opportunity....and risk.....is too good to pass up.
