Multibars Angelfish

[this is me]

Anyone has any long term experience with these to share?
I really like them and would love keep a pair. I ordered a pair from LA 2 weeks ago and one arrived dead. The other one is still in my holding tank with liverocks and some LPS corals. So far, I haven't seen it eaten anything. I've offered it a bunch of food which includes LRS reef frenzy, mysis, brine, live blackworms, chopped up clams, bunch of flakes and pellets. The stomach does not look pinched and the fish is not skinny. In fact, it looks pretty fat. It's possible that it's been eating the pods in the holding tank but I have not seen it eaten anything with my own eyes.
The pair I got from LA are from Indonesia. Are the Marshals really that much better?
I have successfully trained many Regal Angelfish to eat. Are they harder to get to eat than Regal Angelfish? I just want to know if I should even keep trying.

 

[ebushrow]

I can only chime in and say that if you can get them from Vanawatu you have a much better chance to keep them long term....it really holds for all fish collected there....they are just hard to get.

 

[Yas]

I'm a multibars angelfish lover, like crazy. Though I lost the previous ones, my new one is supposed to arrive today. So I'm pretty excited.

I was told that ones from Indonesia was captured using some sort of poison, and that's why they don't eat well and suddenly die in a month or so. I'm not sure if this is true or not. I prefer ones from Vanuatu. They are generally fat and healthy. Of course, there are variations in their health conditions. Some are good the others are not.

When I get one from Vanuatu, I always check the conditions. For me, there are typically three conditions.

1. Dull looking.
2. Always curious about things around them and move relatively lively.
3. Too much frightened and nervous about everything.

Choose 2. They are very delicate and nervous fish, and 1 can be physically unhealthy and 3 can be mentally too difficult. 2 is healthy and optimistic and has a high hope to get accustomed to your tank relatively easily.

If you can't actually see the conditions and get one via mail, you must have a very reliable and experienced reps to discuss the above conditions on the phone.

For me, it generally takes 7 to 10 days to see them eating something. I always use live brine shrimp. Any food they see in your tank is different from the ones they used to eat in their environment. So they don't know which one is edible. But if you scatter live brine shrimp in your tank like snow, they unintentionally put it in their mouth when breathing, which force them to recognize it's food. Also, because shrimps are living and moving, they are more likely to be recognized as their food compared to artificial food, I guess.

If your multibars angelfish is healthy enough, this is going to work. So they basically start learning when you appear in front of your display tank, there will always be food. Once brine shrimp worked, start including a bit of general fish food and increase the ratio of the fish food little by little so that they finally eat such fish food. Letting brine shrimp hatch every day is actually very troublesome. But in two to four weeks, you'll be free from such a task.

I don't recommend feeding two multibars in a tank. I did it before and saw one was fiercely bullish against the other all the time, which would have been pretty stressful for the weak one. I know someone was successful. He had a big one and a small one so that there was no rivalry. I attache a picture taken when I had been feeding two together. They looked so lovely, but actually the weaker one was so much stressed out at that time.

Another reason I like the one from Vanuatu is that they have stronger yellow lines in between bands. One from Marshall Islands have relatively strong yellow lines, too, but the Vanuatu one has thinner black bands, making them look brighter than others.

Hope it helps.

Yas