Dwarf lionfish questions!

[Subuchef]

Hi everyone, its been a little bit since i've posted, but! After a long while of waiting to see a dwarf lion I went to my LFS yesterday (only going for chaeto) and got a fish too, like always. He/she is a tiny one but my main questions are...
What would be the best food to swap live with? I have some calamari for my eel already cut up, would that be an ok place to start, may not look like a fish but getting my eel to eat frozen was a piece of cake with calamari.
Hes really small right now and my plan is to put him in my 75g with my kole tang x2 the size of him and a snowflake eel about 12+ inches and thick as a sausage. Should i wait till hes about the size of the kole or would it be ok since hes got a good defense with the spines ect.
Last but not least! heres a pic does everything look ok? Im not experienced with Lionfish diseases but he ate the ghost shrimps very readily and looks healthy to me. thanks for the help in advanced.

 

[lion king]

As far as initial training that is not my expertise; check lionfish lair. Eventually you'll be feeding him bite size pieces of shrimp. squid, scallops, and really whatever you are feeding your eel will be fine. As far as size goes he will grow pretty fast to about 3-4", but just so he is too large for your snowflake to wrestle down and he'll be ready. I would get him trained really good to the foods you'll be feeding him before you put him in the dt. that's really the priority. From what I can see he looks pretty good, it kills me every time I see a itty bitty like him; I want to bring him home.

 

[Subuchef]

right lionfish lair was the first place I went to read, and I know how you felt this little fella was in the lfs a week or two before and im super happy he was still there. I'll keep updating the page on the progress. thanks!

 

[Lionfish Lair]

How cute!!

Is he in a QT now? If yes, leave him there until we get him converted to frozen.

I had a bad experience with a snowflake, so I'm a little hesitant of them.... I don't know much of anything about kole tangs. What's their personality like? Are they going to nip/pick?

They look good from what can be seen in the picture. They're not very happy, as you can see by the solid color, but that's to be expected.

 

[Subuchef]

How cute!!

Is he in a QT now? If yes, leave him there until we get him converted to frozen.

I had a bad experience with a snowflake, so I'm a little hesitant of them.... I don't know much of anything about kole tangs. What's their personality like? Are they going to nip/pick?

They look good from what can be seen in the picture. They're not very happy, as you can see by the solid color, but that's to be expected.

yup little guys in the qt definitely want to train and know he's healthy before anything. also i was super sketched with my sfe attacking my kole tang it's fairly big but first 10mins of introducing I looked from the back of the tank and my eel had his Jaws around the fish and I flipped out, but nothing came of it thankfully. I think the kole holds his own but other than that all he really does is back up into them to show off(cause the barbs on the tail) no picking or anything.
also for the solid color I took it with flash accidently, I think I spooked him cause normally there are white stripes

 

[Lionfish Lair]

A lot of times when you first get them they get dark like that because they're nervous/stressed. It's been a hard day. Our sfe was fine for years and then around the age of 12, took out everything... so they're not my first choice :-/

You're going to love him/her.

 

[Subuchef]

Our sfe was fine for years and then around the age of 12, took out everything... so they're not my first choice :-/

You're going to love him/her.

I already love her so much haha, but that's no good, I really don't want that to happen but I've read they just snap sometimes.
So I picked up some ghost shrimp about 5 small ones. I used my long tweezers to feed him and he ate them all happily and readily no issue with the tweezers, should I do another round in a couple days to acclimate him to how he's fed and swap to frozen on the 3rd feeding?

 

[Lionfish Lair]

I would take some of those live shrimp and freeze them. In a couple of days, I would thaw them out and offer them.

 

[Subuchef]

I'll have to run and get a few more but no biggie, I read on your website to do that but forgot, should I try and jiggle it or just patience? I checked on him last night at like 1am and he was swimming around! normally he'd be super tucked in the rocks or hiding. such an awesome fish

 

[JaimeAdams]

I love fuzzy dwarfs. That was the fish that got me into the hobby.

 

[Subuchef]

well he eats frozen! great tip on freezing the ghosties, @Lionfish Lair, I fed 1 live and 2 frozen so lets hope it continues. here's a quick vid.

 

[Subuchef]

so I'm back guys, didn't feed him for 2 days then got some more ghosts he will 100% take them all frozen and also ate a tail of silverside after I jiggle it for 10 mins straining my arm haha. but he won't eat anything else aside from these ghosties, anyone know of a good frozen shrimp that are whole to buy, i feel like it needs to resemble something he knows, i tried calamari and another fish tail but no go. I've been putting off krill cause everything I've read seems to lead to bad health in the long run, any suggestions I want this fella in my dt!

 

[lion king]

If you have an asian market, in the frozen section where they keep all the seafood. Check out silverfish, they are small whole white fish, it's in a box with green trim. They are suppose to be nutritious, you can also enhance whatever you bare feeding him with vitamins and efa's.

 

[Subuchef]

If you have an asian market, in the frozen section where they keep all the seafood. Check out silverfish, they are small whole white fish, it's in a box with green trim. They are suppose to be nutritious, you can also enhance whatever you bare feeding him with vitamins and efa's.

picked up a small block of those silverfish thawed some out with my frozen ghost shrimp but nothing not even a head turn. but he goes right for the cold ghost shrimp the second it hits the water.. I dunno what to do with this picky lil fella..

 

[lion king]

PE mysis is another good try, they are larger than regular mysis and you can get whole ones. There's also jumbo mysis. My lions will eat all of those along with the silverfish. It could easily take a couple of months to get him eating enough of a variety of dead stuff to sustain. You got to trick him into eating the other stuff, drop a silverfish right after a ghostie.

 

[Subuchef]

I tried to get some PE mysis/ larger whole mysis but my LFS doesn't carry anything bigger than these extremely tiny mysis for some reason but anyways I picked up some krill (i know its not good longterm). It worked I fed him a piece of krill and he instantly took to it no problems. After a day I went to my local grocery store and asked the deli for 5 bay shrimp, funny enough the guy said "let me guess for fish?" and gave me them for free I felt like these shrimp look pretty similar to krill, so I swapped out the krill with the bay shrimp and he took to it, now he's eating something more healthy. Lion king would you mind sharing your lionfish's diet? Would love to know a good healthy variety of things to feed, I know the basics like squid, scallop, shrimp, but not much out of that.

 

[Subuchef]

I tried to get some PE mysis/ larger whole mysis but my LFS doesn't carry anything bigger than these extremely tiny mysis for some reason but anyways I picked up some krill (i know its not good longterm). It worked I fed him a piece of krill and he instantly took to it no problems. After a day I went to my local grocery store and asked the deli for 5 bay shrimp, funny enough the guy said "let me guess for fish?" and gave me them for free I felt like these shrimp look pretty similar to krill, so I swapped out the krill with the bay shrimp and he took to it, now he's eating something more healthy. Lion king would you mind sharing your lionfish's diet? Would love to know a good healthy variety of things to feed, I know the basics like squid, scallop, shrimp, but not much out of that.

 

[lion king]

If you have read any of my other post, I advocate a live diet. All of my predator tanks: lions, angler, cuttlefish mostly get a live diet. My lions will take the above mentioned on a very limited basis, or when I am unable to get live. I know you are interested in feeding a dead diet so I offered the info I had concerning that, if you are interested in why I feed live I would be happy to share.

 

[Subuchef]

I'd love to know why, please explain. the main reason I want to feed a dead diet is because of cost and I cant go back and forth from the lfs that often atm.

 

[lion king]

I'd love to know why, please explain. the main reason I want to feed a dead diet is because of cost and I cant go back and forth from the lfs that often atm.

That seems to be the primary motivation along with the lfs to simplify a sale. My adventure started over 5 years ago when I rescued a starving fuzzy from a unknowing or uncaring lfs. I nursed him back with live food, then with my eyes open I started to find the starving dwarf lions all over town. If you notice other than liveaquaria, all of the other online retailers have a restriction on their guarantees for the dwarf lion species. I have friends that own and work in lfs, so I started researching the mortality rate and success of keeping the dwarf lions.

This is what I found, I've never met anyone in person that ever kept a dwarf lion species more than several months just feeding them an exclusive dead diet. This is what usually happens; one a hobbyist has a lion in a community tank and he eats the food from the water column that's being fed to whole tank, ends up not being near enough to sustain him and over a couple of months the lion actually starves. two like you they train the lion to eat what appears to be a healthy varied diet of chunks of food, enough to sustain and for months he's growing and thriving, then overnight the lion just refuses to eat. Instincts would be to re=introduce live food, but it rarely if ever works, alot of times the tank inhabitants are more aggressive to eat any live food; and if the lion was weaned very young, he really doesn't even know how to hunt.

One of my attractions to a "predator tank" is that they are actually predators = they hunt, once you are feeding dead on a stick; they really aren't predators anymore. My friends in the aquarium trade are wowed about the activity in my lion tank. Once you've trained him to eat dead, the only activity you'll likely ever see is when it's feeding time. They will spend almost all of their time perching, it's the most common complaint I hear from other hobbyist keeping lions.

This is just my opinion based on my experiences, It seems to be the 1st order of business to wean a "predator" fish to dead food; I personally just don;t get it. I keep a 10g tank with a sponge filter that I keep ghosties and small mollies, I can gut load them with marine pellets and enhance the water with vitamins and efa's that's suppose to be absorbed. I don;t get into the debate live vs dead, this is what works for me, and I am happy to share my info with those that want it.

 

[Subuchef]

do you breed your feeders or just restock every so often? I'm totally up to feed live but if I just drop a ghost in my tank I guarentee my puffer or eel would gobble it up before the lionfish sees its in the water, as for mollies I heard freshwater fish is bad for them longterm (not knocking your info just what I've heard and would like to know what you think)