Lion Fish Owners

[lil.guppy]

Can lionfish go in a tank with live rock that includes corals and anemanies?
What clean up crew would you recomend with a lion fish.

[leebca]

Lion fishes get along with corals very well. They however take large 'dumps' of nitrogen wastes that most corals will not likely live through. As a predatory fish, they eat large packages of food and defecate similar large packages of wastes. If the wastes are managed properly, there is no reason that Lionfishes wouldn't get along in a reef tank.

Crabs and shrimp are not options for the clean up crew. A couple of herds of different kinds of snails would be fine. Live rock would/should bring with it bristle worms and other small marine lifeforms that will work on bits of available nutrients.

[dendro982]

If I may:
I had ~5" mombasa lionfish in low light mixed reef tank, no problems:

Chromises and shrimp were removed as lionfish grow, though.

It excreted a compact piece, and if it is within the reach, you can remove it using acrylic tube.
In the same tank was much more polluting fish:

Apart from being big and being fed a lot 3x a day, it spits, excretes much more of half-liquid mass in the front of 600 gph powerhead, you can imagine results. Yet there grew: kenya tree red and hairy muchrooms, lemnalia, ahthelia and white xenia, yellow polyps, gsp and bsp, hammer, frogspawn, candycane, even lobophyllia, scolymia and acan echino, but these required higher light. Non-photosynthetic corals too, and they their feeding contributed to pollution even more, then a large fish.

Filtration for BB 90g tank was: daily changed 50-100 micron sock, 250g rated venturi with needlewheel pump skimmer, cup of carbon, cup of phosphate remover. If you will have possibility to use ozone, it helped other people in situation with water quality, and they used a large piece of filter floss roll, changed once in 2-3 days.

Hermits were safe, at least for a time being, but mine caused more troubles, than helped. I also prefer snails.