Question on Aiptasia-eating Filefish (Matted Filefish)

[RobertN]

Hi All-
Does anyone have any personal experience with these fish? My question specifically is, if they are eating Aiptasia, will they eat larger Aiptasia too or do they typically only eat small ones. I know I've heard that Peppermint shrimp that end up going after Aiptasia's will usually only eat smaller Aiptasias. Is this true of this Filefish?
What prompted this question is that I just bought a small Matted Filefish and I put it into a net breeder box that hangs on the inside of the tank. I like to do this for a few days before actually putting it on its own into the DT. I found a couple of small Aiptasia's that were coming up in the sand and I put them on the bottom of the net breeder and the Filefish ate them right away. Then I put a couple of frag plugs that had larger Aiptasia's growing on them on the bottom of the net breeder, but the filefish hasn't seemed interested in them. I hope it will eventually eat them, but I started to wonder about whether the size of the Aiptasia matters with this fish.
Thanks for any experience info you can provide regarding this question!
Robert

 

[jsker]

Robert
I have had great success with my matted file fish. I would just release the fish into the system and the fish will relaxe and do it job. What do you feed? Mine also likes frozen and nori. I have not seen any aptasia for sometime now but if on pops up, it gone with in a day. I have had my for over a year.

 

[eatbreakfast]

I've found they vary greatly fish to fish. Some eat all the aiptasia right away, some pick a little and then ramp up their aiptasia consumption, some focus on smaller aiptasia, some don't eat that much aiptasia. If you have one that doesn't seem to relish eating aiptasia, zapping a few aiptasia with kalk solution seems to help the file's to develop a taste for them.

 

[DRoth335]

In our old tank, our pair went through literally 100's of aptasia in 2-3 months - many were quite large. They also eat the frozen DIY food that we feed as well as NLS pellets which the tank gets 2x/day.

 

[Psiber_Syn]

My old filefish also ate two entire zoa colonies so keep an eye on them fyi

 

[4FordFamily]

Mine eat majanos and aiptasia typically they go after them quickly but some will never eat them at all, others may take awhile

 

[miguelspuerto]

I had one that ate all big small and even ate mojano he cleaned my tank up

 

[RobertN]

Thx! 2-3 weeks after I got the filefish, it finally started doing its work. It cleared out all the aiptasia in a couple of weeks and haven't seen them again. And now it has been a model citizen in my tank. Very happy I got it.

 

[Eva Rose]

I have 2. I had just a tiny bit of aiptasia but I wanted to keep it from spreading. At first they would peck all around the aiptasia then go grab Nori off the clip with the tangs. Really?? But after several weeks they developed a taste for it. No aiptasia since (1 year ago). They still love to eat with the tangs.

 

[RobertN]

@Eva Rose Yeah, mine eats nori too with my tangs. You have 2? What size tank do you have? Is it typical that you can have 2 without them fighting with each other?

 

[miguelspuerto]

the only bad thing that i bought a nice frogspawn the other day and my file-fish started picking on it so i had to take the frogspawn back to the store

 

[Eva Rose]

@Eva Rose Yeah, mine eats nori too with my tangs. You have 2? What size tank do you have? Is it typical that you can have 2 without them fighting with each other?

I have a 300 gal. My 2 (both ORA fish from Live Aquaria Diver's Den) get along very well. Every now & then the larger one will briefly chase the smaller, but not often.

I read you can tell the gender by looking for bristles on the male. I don't know if this is accurate. Supposedly the male has bristles in the area circled on pic.(and the female does not). I used the pics off Diver's Den to try & get a male & female.
Note: This pic shows where to look for bristles.
But I would ask a R2R expert about compatibility. I don't know what tank size is needed to allow a pair OR if you must have male/female to deter fighting. I just got a male/female to try to avoid fights.

 

[eatbreakfast]

I've found they are pretty tolerant of each other. I've kept 3 in a 120g before without issue.

 

[Murica]

I had one but it got blown around constantly, I may have pulled the short stick with mine because he was not a very strong swimmer at all. It was either reduce all water flow in the tank or take him out.. Needless to say I no longer have one

 

[eatbreakfast]

I had one but it got blown around constantly, I may have pulled the short stick with mine because he was not a very strong swimmer at all. It was either reduce all water flow in the tank or take him out.. Needless to say I no longer have one

That's strange, I have some in tanks with very high flow and multiple powerheads, and they negotiate the flow fine.

 

[Murica]

That's strange, I have some in tanks with very high flow and multiple powerheads, and they negotiate the flow fine.

Yeah I probably just got a bad one, just sharing my experience. No lie sometimes it looked like a piece of flake food floating around it was so bad. Weird too cause no issues when on quarantine.

 

[smokin'reefer]

Great question. Thanks for posting.

 

[drawman]

I have one in a 60 gallon with a gyre and vortech and she does great getting around.

Mine eats aiptasia quite well. It was aquacultured by biota and I remember hearing/reading that they train them on aiptasia. I see a few very very small ones here and there but the display is essentially clean.

 

[GeoSquid]

I have a 180 gal that had hundreds upon hundreds of aiptasia...could have been a thousand. Got one of these little guys. He devoured all of them within a month. Once he was done, he decided to eat a hammer coral, neon leather, toadstool leather, a field of polyps and a candy cane coral. Didn't touch a couple mushrooms though. Haven't been able to catch him yet, no matter, no coral left to worry about.

 

[Grey Guy]

I have a 180 gal that had hundreds upon hundreds of aiptasia...could have been a thousand. Got one of these little guys. He devoured all of them within a month. Once he was done, he decided to eat a hammer coral, neon leather, toadstool leather, a field of polyps and a candy cane coral. Didn't touch a couple mushrooms though. Haven't been able to catch him yet, no matter, no coral left to worry about.

That's too bad, but I did want to know whether or not filefish eat mushrooms, so thanks for that.