I don’t know whether it’s the time of the year, the weather, or just meeting old friends at a MACNA that gets me to want to push the envelope. Whatever the reason or reasons, I decided to buy two small clown triggerfish (Balistoides conspicillum) to add to my 10-foot reef tank. As you can see from the pictures, they appear to be thriving. In time they will grow up, and then what. Of course, my fantasy is that they will mate and spawn, not destroy everything in my reef tank.

I have had experience with clown triggers – many years ago an importer gave me a 12-inch clown trigger that was too big for sale to pet stores. I kept it in a 120-gallon tank of its own. It did entertain visitors by spitting water at them, and by wrecking everything in the tank. It ate whole frozen shrimp with gusto, and tried to eat my hand every time I tried to fix a siphon tube that it had dislodged. I eventually gave it to a public aquarium, but always missed its “personality.”