Hi people I just wanted to share my experience considering how much money it cost I figured I'd share for the community.
Disclaimer is that this is my personal experience, not all individual fish are the same.
I first bought an ORA captive bred filefish about a month ago in the hopes that it would partially solve my aiptasia problem. It arrived in great condition however it was a bit smaller than I expected. Somewhere around 0.5 to 0.75"
The bottom line: it was wayyyyyyyyyy too small for any tank that has decent water flow. I'm not even talking about SPS or crazy flow, but it seriously was overpowered in my tank. In my opinion and experience, ORA needs to raise their filefish a little bit longer maybe a month or two before selling them. This delay would not impact production IMO but the overhead to raise the fish would go up a bit. That said, ORA is more expensive than Biota in my case for these fish; so I would have expected a larger specimen.
My ORA fish died in my tank I blame myself honestly but there was no where in the acclimation guide or anything that really stressed what I'm trying to stress to you now: these are sold very small and really can't be expected to survive 100% in our coral tanks in which aiptasia is the pest we are likely targeting by purchasing these fish. Even if your fish surives one day there's a decent chance it could get predated on or stung by a coral/aiptasia or get sucked into a powerhead etc.
So I didn't want to give up on my plan to include a filefish in my tank and I found a great deal from Algaebarn on filefish from Biota. I decided to give it another shot and surprisingly the fish arrived slightly larger than the first fish (from ORA). It's probably a few milimeters larger which isn't much but it's more than I got with the first filefish.
So basically paid less and got a slightly larger specimen from Biota instead of ORA. I still very much appreciate ORA. I got a captive bred target Mandarin from them that is doing EXCELLENT. However I wish they would stress how small these fish are and that they are really not appropriate for reef tanks until they get larger than the size they are sold at. Most of my aiptasia are bigger than the fishes (both ORA and Biota!).
Any question let me know thanks.
Disclaimer is that this is my personal experience, not all individual fish are the same.
I first bought an ORA captive bred filefish about a month ago in the hopes that it would partially solve my aiptasia problem. It arrived in great condition however it was a bit smaller than I expected. Somewhere around 0.5 to 0.75"
The bottom line: it was wayyyyyyyyyy too small for any tank that has decent water flow. I'm not even talking about SPS or crazy flow, but it seriously was overpowered in my tank. In my opinion and experience, ORA needs to raise their filefish a little bit longer maybe a month or two before selling them. This delay would not impact production IMO but the overhead to raise the fish would go up a bit. That said, ORA is more expensive than Biota in my case for these fish; so I would have expected a larger specimen.
My ORA fish died in my tank I blame myself honestly but there was no where in the acclimation guide or anything that really stressed what I'm trying to stress to you now: these are sold very small and really can't be expected to survive 100% in our coral tanks in which aiptasia is the pest we are likely targeting by purchasing these fish. Even if your fish surives one day there's a decent chance it could get predated on or stung by a coral/aiptasia or get sucked into a powerhead etc.
So I didn't want to give up on my plan to include a filefish in my tank and I found a great deal from Algaebarn on filefish from Biota. I decided to give it another shot and surprisingly the fish arrived slightly larger than the first fish (from ORA). It's probably a few milimeters larger which isn't much but it's more than I got with the first filefish.
So basically paid less and got a slightly larger specimen from Biota instead of ORA. I still very much appreciate ORA. I got a captive bred target Mandarin from them that is doing EXCELLENT. However I wish they would stress how small these fish are and that they are really not appropriate for reef tanks until they get larger than the size they are sold at. Most of my aiptasia are bigger than the fishes (both ORA and Biota!).
Any question let me know thanks.