Foxface and colt coral don't mix

[Kevomac]

I bought a foxface lo a couple of months back to speed up the hair algae removal process in my relativelty new reef, and he did very well at munching on the algae. He occassionally drew the ire of my hippo tang, but they never went beyond posturing for each other. Then a few weeks ago, I noticed that it looked like the foxface was picking at my large colt coral. I though maybe he was picking hair algea that had broken loose and floated into it, but it soon became apparent he was not. My first thought was that I hoped he wouldn't do any real damage, because removing him from my 215 gal reef didn't sound too appealing.

Well, this last weekend, I noticed the foxface was resting among the branches of the colt, and had his stress colors out. I figured he was trying to hide and moved on. Two days later, I found him stuck to the overflow box above the colt, upside down and clearly near death. I scooped him out at that point and pitched him.

The moral of this story is, I have always heard that colts are poisonous, but I never expected a foxface would pick at mine. Apparently it was a fatal error on his part!