Whats the most difficult saltwater fish you have kept successfully?


For me it is my Potters angel. He has been great from the first moment I brought him home. He eats very regularly and I have yet to have ant major issues with him. These guys are known coral nippers and he has really only bothered my clam the first couple of days I brought it home. Since then he has never showe any more intrest in the clam.
Liveaquaria labels this faush as a difficult species, but I have yet to see any difficulties about him.
Here is a current picture.

I have been pretty lucky with keeping some "difficult" fish, and even inverts, but I've had the most success with a pair of Mandarins that have never had any problems with eating prepared foods. So far I've seen them eat everything, even some blood worms I gave them last winter when I had forgotten to restock the freezer. The "trick", if it can be called that, is to shop around for tank bred versions and make sure you can verify the fact that they eat prepared foods by having the store show you before you buy them. Here is a short video of my male mandarin eating mysis shrimp.


P.S. As far as I know, the Moorish Idol I had a few months ago is still alive and well in a store's 1200 gallon tank. He also ate well but I purchased him because he was mislabeled at another store and I felt he had little chance of surviving so we will see how well the local 'expert' (which I believe he is) can provide for him.

Man that's a neat video. How many other fish do you have in that tank?

Hey thincat,



Tommy, I hope you have enough creatures to finish off all that mysis.

Maybe thats why Tommy had some algae problems! Geez, talk about OVER feeding your tank!

I have had bad luck with the pygmy angels. I am one out of three so far. I lost a coral beauty angelfish and a rusty angel.

I have had my Atlantic Pygmy Angel for 4 months now and going good!

That's just an optical illusion because I was spot feeding in order to get the video...although you make a good point and it looks like a very good example of what not to do. For the record though, my problem was/is bryopsis and it seems like I can slow it down a lot but I haven't been able to stop it (that sound like an ok excuse or not so much? )

Right next door to that Mandarin though, I also had a Fu Manchu lionfish that also ate mysis. In fact, feeding time was just about the only time I could find him during the day.
http://s96.photobucket.com/albums/l162/ ... 677163.flv

Otherwise I'm pretty sure that was back when I had 6 or 7 damsels and they were always pretty good at picking food out of the water. Due to problems related to chronic indecision, I've been fortunate enough (or crazy enough...depending on how you look at it) to keep a lot of different fish so I can't really remember what other livestock I had at the time.

The hardest fish I've kept (so far) is a Green Mandarin as well. My first mandarin died in an unfortunate ICH treatment accident. My 2nd however is doing rather well and by far the fattest fish in the tank.

These pics were taken before she really got fat.

I've had a handful of fish listed as challenging (without many problems or surprises)... Kept a mandarin for almost a year (was fat, but removed egg crate lids when we upgraded lighting and he eventually jumped out of the tank, landin in the overflow and was pulled into a pump down under... yikes. i think that was the only fatality this year!)

We also kept a cortez stingray for 7 months but he ate every other fish I introduced, so I had to sell him back so I could appreciate more of the hobby!

We've did a large koran and powder blue for 8 months. traded the koran in once I found a majestic angel (had been looking for a majestic around a year or so)... started WWIII with powder blue, so i traded him in as well after a couple days of fighting for a naso & sailfin & yellow. our flame dwarf went berserk on the yellow so I finally traded him in on a moonlight dwarf last week. Holding my breath to see if my luck of hardy "difficult" fish that seem to mostly just have bad attitudes holds out.

Thanks for joining again!

Seems like you have had some good success with the "difficult" species. You must be doing something right!

Brad

I never really know if I should think think of rehoming a fish as an upgrade or a downgrade. That flame was a mean bugger for the year I had him, but over the last 4 days I've YET to see the moonlight dwarf swim in open water with the lights on. I could at least see the flame (typically harassing fish 5x it's size... heh)