Which fish belong in ocean only??

bct15 · Sep 17, 2011

There often are fish for sale that are labelled expert only and generally not covered by vendors warranties. But not all the fish labelled this way are all that difficult to keep, while others that are supposedly not all that difficult seem to be described as next to impossible to keep. This has gotten me wondering, exactly which fish should be left in the ocean. Please let me (and others) know which fish are extremely difficult to keep and the reason why, or which fish are labelled as expert only but can be maintained in an aquarium without constant attention and monitoring by the aquarist.

Some examples that come to mind
Cleaner wrasse
Achilles Tang
Horseshoe Crab

Please elaborate on any of these (and others) if you have experience with them.

revhtree · Sep 17, 2011

One fish I love that many have not had success with is the Moorish Idol. Probably my most wanted fish I wish I could keep.

Supposedly the Idol eats a lot of sponge in the wild and you have to have a endless supply to keep them alive for long periods of time.

GeoHawk · Sep 17, 2011

My cleaner wrasse is the biggest pig in the tank. He eats tons of food and seems to be very healthy. I have heard others having bad luck with them though.

I also have a Potters Wrasse that is doing very well, but I went through alot of pods and different types of frozen food before it actually decided to start eating 2 weeks later.

evolved · Sep 21, 2011

Cleaner wrasses are absolutely the first thing which comes to mind for me.

Not only is it almost certain they will die in a closed system due to a slow starvation (as we cannot provide them with their true diet in a closed system), but the mere collection of them negatively impacts wild reefs.

Sure, there are a few long-term success stories, but for each one of those, there are hundreds of failures.

Paul B · Sep 21, 2011

There is a long list of fish that will most likely die in your tank in a short time unless you can take care of it's needs. I have kept many moorish Idols and I learned about them by diving with them in the South Pacific. They eat mostly sponge and I collect a certain sponge for that purpose but if you don't live in a place where you can collect it, the fish is most likely to die in a few months. I kept one for 5 years which stinks but I don't think anyone has kept one much longer. Orange spotted filefish, beautiful fish, almost impossable to keep. I know of one person who keeps them and even breeds them but he is the only one. Their diet is coral polyps and not much of anything else. Clown Sweetlips can be kept but you need to have decent size live food like grass shrimp every day. Ribbon eels are also very finicky about food as are square anthius. They can be kept but you just can't throw flakes or pellets in and hope they live. Seahorses are easy if you train them to eat dead food and feed them a couple of times a day. Twin spot gobies are another fish that ususlly starve no matter what you do.
I have kept all of those fish I mentioned but they are all a lot of work and they take up time to collect their food and present it to them in a way that they will eat it. That is what determines if a fish is easy to keep, the amount of work you want to put into it.