Frog fish ownership

[chair]

A couple of things I'm hoping the r2r community can help me answer...

1. A reputable source for buying frogfish online

2. The most ideal water parameters or unique things I should be doing for my frogfish tank (Temp lighting MG etc)

3. Feeding amount, diet variation and supplementing

4. Can I pair my frogfish, and if so which species of frogfish should I go for...

5.Any helpful tips from previous or current owners would be greatly appreciated :D

I am currently new to this hobby with a newly cycled tank (32.5 fluval curved tank with 2 Ai 16 reef lights with 2 clowns at the moment and frag of frogspawn)

 

[ace007]

It is the 80 day larval period combined with the requirement for Parvocalanus pods that why they are so difficult to raise in captivity - at least in the UK.

 

[Chrisv.]

It is the 80 day larval period combined with the requirement for Parvocalanus pods that why they are so difficult to raise in captivity - at least in the UK.

Can Parvocalanus be cultured?

 

[ace007]

My guy thinks he was the last person in the UK to produce Parvocalanus unless anyone knows different.

 

[Chrisv.]

My guy thinks he was the last person in the UK to produce Parvocalanus unless anyone knows different.

Is the issue the lack of availability of a source culture?

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Can Parvocalanus be cultured?

It can be, yes, but pod cultures are very difficult to come by in the UK.

My guy thinks he was the last person in the UK to produce Parvocalanus unless anyone knows different.

I'm not sure of all the laws in the UK, but you might be able to harvest some wild copepods (such as with a plankton net or something) of a comparable size and try feeding them - no guarantees it would work, but it'd give you a chance:

catch a bunch of plankton in the ocean, sieve them to get into the right size range, use a microscope and pipette to hand select the rights pods to move them into their own container (removing any strays of other kinds of pods that get into the mix), and use those in the container to start your own culture.

Ideally, they'd come with some wild phytoplankton you can culture as well to ensure you can culture the pods (the phyto would sieve through with the tiny pod nauplii; you could sieve some of it out with a smaller sieve into a separate culture container as well, and you could use the microscope and pipette to ensure pure cultures if you wanted).

 

[ace007]

Laying eggs is not breeding, there's alot more to it to that. As I stated earlier, I've had a number of them lay eggs. Laying eggs is just a natural process, most times this ends eventually. They are never fertilized, or I should probably say very rarely, although I've never seen it. And I've only read it about once, with a marble mouthed angler. Even this biologist states the lacking diet and none of the spawn survived.

Read this thread, you don't have to believe what I say. I promise you if you continue that diet those fish will not survive long. It's pretty basic; anglers are carnivorous ambush predators. A feeding schedule too frequent with a diet high in thiaminese, low in proper fats, and high in carbs will not sustain these fish long. Honestly 4 months is just about right for the high end of survival for this type of diet and this feeding schedule. These are not fish with a long track record of successfully keeping. You can find your info in the search bar. You can believe other sources that don't show you pics or pics of a 2" warty they say they have had for 5 years, feeding them krill and silversides; not going to happen. Do me a favor, post back in a year with your reports of how you cared for them.

As requested - a year has passed. My breeding pair are still in good health - now yellow and purple in colouration - eating mixture of live gut loaded ghost shrimp and lancefish. They stopped spawning in the summer and started again almost 12 months to the day when they started last time at Xmas 2024. My local specialist fish breeder now has a source of food for the larvae so is going to try again.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

As requested - a year has passed. My breeding pair are still in good health - now yellow and purple in colouration - eating mixture of live gut loaded ghost shrimp and lancefish. They stopped spawning in the summer and started again almost 12 months to the day when they started last time at Xmas 2024. My local specialist fish breeder now has a source of food for the larvae so is going to try again.

Great update - good luck, and please keep us updated on how it goes (any failures included)!

 

[Eastside reefer]

As requested - a year has passed. My breeding pair are still in good health - now yellow and purple in colouration - eating mixture of live gut loaded ghost shrimp and lancefish. They stopped spawning in the summer and started again almost 12 months to the day when they started last time at Xmas 2024. My local specialist fish breeder now has a source of food for the larvae so is going to try again.

Can you share your feeding routine? Thank you