Dispar Anthias are very well suited for the aquarium life, given a proper environment and this starts with keeping them in groups. While a male isn't requisite because of their ability to change sex, we do suggest you start with one male and several females. This natural distribution will help them acclimate and save them the stress of trying to work out which female is most dominant. Pair this one male with a bare minimum of three females, with between seven and ten being ideal. Dispar Anthias are very active fish and have evolved to be pretty much constantly eating. As they hold position in the current, darting to and fro to grab morsels of food that swim by, they are burning calories at a rapid rate. The plus side of this for hobbyists is that this is a fish that is accustomed to eating food without giving that food much of an inspection, because there just isn't time. As a result, they generally segue to frozen foods, and then to pellets very quickly and easily. In house, we start by feeding them a mix of thawed meaty offerings from Gamma Foods. We mix things like mysis, enriched brine, finely chopped prawn and all this is generally taken without much fuss; we mix some of the small Nutramar Complete Pellets in with this and it doesn't take much time for the Anthias to recognize the pellets as food too. We do these two or three times a day, and in the home aquarium we recommend you emulate this, and more wouldn't hurt. The reason we like to get them on a high-quality pellet is because they are nutritionally dense and offer the benefit of being able to use an auto feeder to spread these meals out even more; you could easily feed five times a day if you wanted to! Click here to learn more
