Auto-pilot
Valuable Member
Hey guys Ive slowly been adding anthias to my reef tank and wanted to share my success with everyone and share what I have learned. I've had a couple failures (I'll share later) but hope that maybe I help others not make some of the mistakes I made. To start if you want to keep some of the harder to keep anthias you NEED a quarantine tank. The second most important thing is food! Anthias need a lot of food AND they are picky eaters. Not only are they picky but if there is anything scaring them or the water isn't right they don't eat. To get them eating you have to spoon feed them, Here comes the choocho open up!
Ok I want to start with my quarantine tank. Its small and no where as big of a space that an anthia needs for the log term.
In my opinion its the most important part of getting new fish to eat, let alone prevent diseases from getting into your DT. Mines a little dirty haha ill clean it tonight I promise. All I have is a 10 gallon and I feel like it does great with one or two fish at a time. In the wild anthias eat small food, they are planktivors who eat zooplankton and small crustaceans. When brought home they likely wont eat large food and will die if not acclimated properly. In order to get them eating you got to start small and work your way up
I start with live baby brine shrimp. Some fish will go straight to rotifers or cyclops right off the bat but there are a lot of picky ones that will take some convincing. I have a hatchery that is pretty cheap and easy to clean. You can also just cut a bottle in half and use an air pump to keep the water circulated. The point of brine shrimp is not to hatch enough to keep them living, it starts a feeding response
One thing to note that's VERY IMPORTANT. ANTHIAS LIKE FLOW! When feeding them if there is no flow to keep the water circulating they won't eat your food. I believe that its part of their instincts to chase and eat fast moving food. I have a pump in my quarantine and it not only keeps my new fish eating it keeps the food moving in circles around the tank so they can eat for a long time after I actually feed them. I remove the filters when doing this as to keep the food suspended for as long as I can. As soon as they are eating a food comfortably I start adding larger food, eventually all of my anthais started eating larger food. My two purple queens took 4 months before they were eating large food and another month before I added them to the main tank. The reason they need to be eating in qt is once you add them to the tank they will then have to fight for their food a little. Most will not learn to fight for food they dont even realize is food and will eventually starve.
This is my Bi-color(Male) About 4inches long
He is the BOSS, Anthias have a hierarchy system. He is in charge and is mean to new anthias. Because they are so mean to each other if you have a bully it will kill all the other anthias, unless there is enough of them to spread out the aggression/ shole together. You will most likely get a male that will pick on everyone, including other tank mates. Ive seen new fish get pretty beat up by this guy, BUT if they are eating and healthy they will eventually be left alone if there are enough fish to spread out agression. one of my fish got so beat up that a part of its dorsal fin is missing and will not grow back. My casualties were due to ONE not putting healthy fish into DT and disease from online vendors. I find it hard to treat anthias for ich or velvet if I don't act as soon as I think they are sick. I use Cupramine and have been successful with fighting of diseases in anthias with it(including my queen anthias).
here are some good pitures
Dispar anthia (female) 3 inches
Bartlet 3 inches (possibly male)
Carberryi (femail) 3 inches You can see its dorsal fin is damaged but still a pretty fish
Queen Anthias (femail) 2 1/2 inches
Sunburst (unknown)2 1/2 inches Hes shy its hard to get a good picture
I have a couple others but will hold off and not post them today,
Happy reefing!!!!
Ok I want to start with my quarantine tank. Its small and no where as big of a space that an anthia needs for the log term.
In my opinion its the most important part of getting new fish to eat, let alone prevent diseases from getting into your DT. Mines a little dirty haha ill clean it tonight I promise. All I have is a 10 gallon and I feel like it does great with one or two fish at a time. In the wild anthias eat small food, they are planktivors who eat zooplankton and small crustaceans. When brought home they likely wont eat large food and will die if not acclimated properly. In order to get them eating you got to start small and work your way up
I start with live baby brine shrimp. Some fish will go straight to rotifers or cyclops right off the bat but there are a lot of picky ones that will take some convincing. I have a hatchery that is pretty cheap and easy to clean. You can also just cut a bottle in half and use an air pump to keep the water circulated. The point of brine shrimp is not to hatch enough to keep them living, it starts a feeding response
One thing to note that's VERY IMPORTANT. ANTHIAS LIKE FLOW! When feeding them if there is no flow to keep the water circulating they won't eat your food. I believe that its part of their instincts to chase and eat fast moving food. I have a pump in my quarantine and it not only keeps my new fish eating it keeps the food moving in circles around the tank so they can eat for a long time after I actually feed them. I remove the filters when doing this as to keep the food suspended for as long as I can. As soon as they are eating a food comfortably I start adding larger food, eventually all of my anthais started eating larger food. My two purple queens took 4 months before they were eating large food and another month before I added them to the main tank. The reason they need to be eating in qt is once you add them to the tank they will then have to fight for their food a little. Most will not learn to fight for food they dont even realize is food and will eventually starve.
This is my Bi-color(Male) About 4inches long
He is the BOSS, Anthias have a hierarchy system. He is in charge and is mean to new anthias. Because they are so mean to each other if you have a bully it will kill all the other anthias, unless there is enough of them to spread out the aggression/ shole together. You will most likely get a male that will pick on everyone, including other tank mates. Ive seen new fish get pretty beat up by this guy, BUT if they are eating and healthy they will eventually be left alone if there are enough fish to spread out agression. one of my fish got so beat up that a part of its dorsal fin is missing and will not grow back. My casualties were due to ONE not putting healthy fish into DT and disease from online vendors. I find it hard to treat anthias for ich or velvet if I don't act as soon as I think they are sick. I use Cupramine and have been successful with fighting of diseases in anthias with it(including my queen anthias).
here are some good pitures
Dispar anthia (female) 3 inches
Bartlet 3 inches (possibly male)
Carberryi (femail) 3 inches You can see its dorsal fin is damaged but still a pretty fish
Queen Anthias (femail) 2 1/2 inches
Sunburst (unknown)2 1/2 inches Hes shy its hard to get a good picture
I have a couple others but will hold off and not post them today,
Happy reefing!!!!
Nice! that would be the ticket for more fish! Lol
