"Impossible"fish

[dennis romano]

For years, there have been fish deemed "impossible" to keep, for example: Pinnatus bats, Orange spot files, ribbon eels and coral eating butterflies. There are many more. Who has had long term success keeping "impossible" fish? What is your secret for success?

 

[Angel_Anthias lover]

Ive had my multibar angelfish for over a year and half now, i know theyre generally deemed impossible, though nowhere near maybe the likes of oxymonocanthus species and the other corallivores. Not exactly long term success, but thought id share.

I dont think i have any secrets apart from getting a healthy one to start and having a quite a mature tank for him to forage.

 

[9975]

That's a nice looking fish

 

[mort]

I think part of the problem with "impossible" fish is due to the environment we keep them in. Some species aren't impossible if we provide an appropriate home for them and with corallivores that means keeping them with their natural food source, which potentially only public aquariums can do realistically.
Interestingly catching some species, like moorish idols, before they have settled on the reefs has proven to make them far easier to msintain as their natural diets aren't fixed yet. It seems to be far more successful than getting older specimens that generally wither away without their specific natural diet.

Another aspect to keeping them is tankmates. Taking the bat fish for instance, they arent the easiest but in a quiet tank without any large competitors like tangs, they arent the hardest fish to get going. I think it's a similar case with many other delicate species that take a long time to settle but without competition they do much better.

The final point I'll make is captive breeding. Several difficult species have been successfully bred and the offspring have proven easier to maintain in our tanks so it would be nice to see this move forward.

 

[najer]

The final point I'll make is captive breeding. Several difficult species have been successfully bred and the offspring have proven easier to maintain in our tanks so it would be nice to see this move forward.

When I got my flame angel the boxes from the wholesaler were just being opened, my mate rummaged through the box with the fish in and handed me a bag.
He knew I had been researching flames.
I took the bag to a light to have a look, looked like an empty bag, on closer inspection there was a baby flame and by baby I mean 10 - 12 mm small!
She was one of three or four that came to the UK a few years ago and the first into a home aquarium because I took her in the bag she was in, notice his colour is more orange than red, it transitioned over the past few months, the reason I bought it was because it should not see corals as food if fed properly, I have never seen it chew a coral.

 

[dennis romano]

I agree with you on all points. Let us face it, thousands of fish die in tanks each year because sometimes we don't know what we are doing. What inspired me to ask was a stream an aquarist started about his cleaner wrasse. He figured out that food size mattered, the smaller the better. The LFS in my town brought in a pinnatus and put it in a tank with other fish for sale, tangs,wrasses etc. The bat turned into an eating machine after they tried live black worms. I am not saying that black worms are the key to get those bats to live. It was an idea that succeeded. My personal hard fish was the copperband. Mine settled in a tank with small gobies and loves the tiniest mysis. Going back to what you said, lack of competition and the correct food. Two decades ago, regal angels were next to impossible. Today, more are kept successfully. I enjoy hearing from other aquarists to hear how the finally succeeded with hard species.

 

[mort]

When I ran the lfs we specialised in seahorses, pipefish, dragonets etc (basically delicate fish) and as we tried to breed most of our own seahorses, bangaii cardinals, clowns etc, we generally had good supplies of live food to feed. Tbh if you have the food these were very simple animals to keep and we had more losses with the bread and butter species.

What I will add is that shipping is one of the biggest reasons why fish don't do well. It wasn't that long ago that tamarins were considered an expert fish and alot was down to shipping practices (at least it was here). They still aren't the easiest fish, mainly because they take a while to put on weight and are slower picky eaters than most wrasse, but with better handling from sea to tank they have become much easier to keep.
Another example of this is the blue streaked cleaner wrasse. If you read up on them they have the reputation of being a tricky fish but often people's experience of them is they are relatively easy. The disparity is that if you get one that excepts food they can be hardy and easy but there are a lot that won't acclimate to a tank and unless their shipping survival rate has improved, they suffer reasonably high mortality when shipped.

It's also interesting to hear other people's experience of fish. We got achilles tangs in and I never had any problems with them at all apart from them being overly aggressive yet everything I always read says they are delicate. We qt'd our fish before sale and I had far more trouble with other "hardier" tangs species.

 

[Topekoms]

Power blue with an Achilles, proper QT and good diet makes em easy as pie

 

[MONTANTK]

I had success with an orange spot filefish. Had it for a few months before ick overtook my tank. Had success with multiple leopards wrasses including the Kuteri and Potters. Never got an opportunity to try a choati.

 

[ca1ore]

I think reefers better understand the requirements of the animals they keep ... and are generally more successful with difficult species. Knowledge can overcome many husbandry challenges, though not all. You have to be willing to adapt the conditions to the requirements of difficult fish, whether a lower temperature for deeper water species or a calmer tank for less competitive ones. Shipping/acclimation remains a problem for some species, but feeding it still the biggest impediment. A fish like pseudoanthis tuka, for example, requires a continuous supply of very small foods. Almost impossible to replicate in a captive aquarium so the vast majority of them die within a few weeks.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Over the years I’ve kept and am currently keeping several fish who are often regarded as being in the difficult end of the spectrum. Current players are a moorish idol, regal angel and copperbanded butterfly and planning to add a Achilles at some point. I wouldn’t say that any of these fish have been difficult.

My experience is that provided that you can find a specimen that has made it through the supply chain in good condition it won’t pose much of a problem, the other side of the coin is that if you buy a CBB or something that is in rough shape chances are that you can do anything you like and the outcome will most likely be a dead fish regardless.

One other thing is that most people tend to be way to stingy with feeding. Benthic feeders are used to a having access to near constant food in abundance.
The idol for example is a pig and is happiest if it gets feed frozen twice a day in addition to both pellets and nori.

I found that in keeping large predators in freshwater you came across more truly difficult fish, for example African tiger fish are large, exceptionally fast and twitchy, hyper aggressive, can be very difficult in getting to feed anything other than live food and have very specific requirements regarding flow otherwise they tend to go nuts and bash themselves to death.

Having said that I would never mess with say corallivorous butterflyfish for example, not impossible to keep but fairly close to it.

 

[dennis romano]

Recently, Live Aquaria has listed shrimp fish, walking batfish, ribbon eels and orange spotted files on their site. Curious to see how many of these fish have been successfully kept

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Recently, Live Aquaria has listed shrimp fish, walking batfish, ribbon eels and orange spotted files on their site. Curious to see how many of these fish have been successfully kept

Indeed. My understanding (no personal experience) is that shrimp/razor fish and orange spotted file fish aren’t that difficult provided that you can offer proper feeding. Buying them thinking that they can thrive one one feeding a day consisting of brine shrimp will most likely end in tears.
I know that some people had luck with converting the files to prepared foods but personally I wouldn’t risk it.