Prior to placing my order for a Chaetodon larvatus (orange faced butterfly), known to be a strict corallivore and only anecdotally reported to eat prepared foods, I called ReefPro and spoke to an individual who told me “I’ve seen a couple of them (C. larvatus) eating mysis”.
I purchased this fish based on this telephone conversation and the claims stated under their Conditioning Protocol, specifically the second bullet point under “Why Buy ReefPro Conditioned Fish”
- Eating prepared foods”
and
“Upon completion of conditioning, all fish are examined, ensure they eating readily available prepared foods, and are conditioned for aquarium life”.
Forty eight hours after receiving the fish, it was lying at the bottom of its quarantine tank. Soon after, it was dead. I sent an email to ReefPro with photos of what I believed showed signs of malnutrition (sunken abdomen and fat storage areas). During the 48 hours it was in the QT, it had never shown interest in eating.
The response from ReefPro was first, “ please keep in mind these fish are incredibly difficult to keep and are [sic] notes as expert only care level “ (there is no mention on the description page that the fish was “expert only care”).
And then they responded, “Your expectation of finding this fish eating frozen foods will likely never happen”.
At this point, I see no advantage that ReefPro provides in sourcing species like the orange faced butterfly. Because they cannot achieve one of their most significant stated benefit which purportedly sets them apart from other retailers, I may as well buy from my LFS which has the same chances of getting fish to eat (or not eat) as those purchased through ReefPro. Because of this experience, I cannot recommend purchasing fish from ReefPro.
fancy wording, ability to take good photos and variety brought me in, and I couldn’t run fast enough out.
Has a wrasse for 2 days, along with 10 other fish in a 150 gallon system, multiple tanks plumbed together. I hit the tank with prazi pro, without 30 seconds, this particular wrasse started doing cartwheels, backflips, breathing at a rate like it just swam a marathon. After about 2 minutes totally still. After the shock wore off, I reached in to tap the fish gently to get it up right, no movement, mouth stuck open dead.
I then picked the dead fish up and placed it in a smaller tank, higher up, same system, to observe and hope it kicked back to life. (Second tank is more shallow, easier to see) I saw what looked like little eye contact lenses crawling out of the gill area, knowing these were flukes, and the fish was dead, I put fish in freshwater, and counted no less than 25 flukes on the bottom of the container. I’ve had in the past big tangs with bad flukes, this wrasse had more and it was all of a 2-3 inch wrasse. When I mentioned this, I did get credit, but that doesn’t help the other 6 wrasses that perished after prazipro, whom all were much more expensive that’s this wrasse. I was told it couldn’t be fkukes, or most likely didn’t come with them, because formalin is run often in systems . Well either flukes are now resistant to formalin , or there is another much different probability.
I fell for the fancy website, strong words of conditioned etc, and variety , lesson learned
