lionfish

[jcolgan]

I am starting a 125g tank soon. I have a tidepool 2 so far. No pump or skimmer yet. I plan on having Lionfish, a few tangs and what ever else will get along in there. Any suggestions on equipement of fish mates? I would like to use live rock also.

Thanks

[Mikeman]

Do you mean what other fish you could have?



snowflake moray eel
foxface fish
marine betta

just to name a few

[jwtrojan44]

jc, I'm not sure what you meant when you said "a few tangs." If you get the lion and perhaps the fish mentioned by mikeman, you'll have a nice set up. Tangs need good water quality and the lion and other aggressive species are quite messy. you'll have a time of it keeping water conditions good so with an aggressive tank, you might want to skip the tangs. Also, tangs are highly territorial and usually intolerant of other tangs unless in very large systems, so exercise caution. JWT

[jcolgan]

Thanks for the info. Do you have any reccommendations for keeping the water quality up since the lionfish are a mess? I have a tidepool 2 so far.

[eses]

More frequent water changes, or atleast on a more constant schedule. Also try to plan your water changes with your feeding schedule, if you feed once a week, change the water shortly after you feed to remove as much of the waste as possible.

Also lots of mechanical filtration helps. If you have an overflow, some form of media here helps skim off some of the stuff the fish doesn't eat and you can then rinse/replace the filter media.

I don't know about feeding lionfish, but my snowflake moray is rather messy; it will eat chunks of fish, shrimp, squid, etc, and I found the best way of feeding him is squishing the food together so it goes down easy for him, and compressing it into easily swallowed chunks so the eel basically hits the food and swallows rather than hitting it and tearing it apart all over the tank. He seems to get much more food, and I don't need to feed him nearly as often. Granted, totally different animal..but the perspective may help.

Wes

[jcolgan]

Thanks Wes

your idea of using a filter media going into the sump is a great idea!

[Abet]

Hello JC, do you plan on adding a live DSB on this setup???
I presently have a 180 with LR, DSB, 70 gl refugium and 20 gl sump with 3 fishes. A volitan, dwarf lionfish and a marine betta. I have been feeding all of them live ghost shrimps, so I have yet to experience the so called messy eaters. If we're talking fish poop then yeah, these fish can POOP!!! However, with a DSB and a lot of critters on it, this should not be a problem.

[jcolgan]

what is a DSB & refugium??
thanks.

[slapshot]

In my 90 gal, I have a lionfish, niger trigger, nasso tang, and a snowflake eel. They all get along OK. The lionfish and eel are the big eaters. I feed them silversides (a few every other day), but they aren't too messy, whatever the lion misses, the eel cleans up off the sand. As far as water goes, I do partials every 2 to 3 weeks and keep the blue filter stuff fresh also. It really isn't much worse than any other saltwater tank, you just may need to do stuff a little more often.

[FMarini]

Hi:
A few points....
1) once you decide on lionfish, every otherfish has to be NOT FOOD...so this will limit you other choices.
2)-anal water managment will allow you to keep messy eaters from polluting themselves to death.
If you email me directly i can send you a lionfish info sheet. the info sheet has lots of husbandry tips as well as how-tos (especially weening these lions over to dead prepared marine foods).
Also feel free to check out my 180gal tank of lions. and yes they have eaten their share of fish which i thought were safe.
frank
http://www.marshreef.org/members/fmarini/index.htm