Striated Anglerfish long term diet?

[johnf3]

Hey all

I recently got a small striated anglerfish, about 4/5”. It’s doing great so far, been feeding saltwater ghost shrimp, peppermint shrimp, green chromis and frozen silverside soaked in selcon. Feeding every 4-5 days currently.
I set up a chaeto grow tank and am also using it to house/hopefully breed feeders. Right now I just have a couple chromis and about 30 ghost shrimp along with chaeto and blue hypnea (which I’m doing chaetogro for). I obviously want something in the tank for ammonia source and am curious if anyone has any opinions on what would work best in the long term? I thought the ghost shrimp may start breeding but I’ve read they can be cannibalistic. Thought of mollies but I want to make sure the anglerfish gets a varied diet too. Just need help figuring out the best feeder to stock for long term ease/success

Anyone in the same boat/have any ideas?

 

[littlefoxx]

@lion king

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

It’s doing great so far, been feeding saltwater ghost shrimp, peppermint shrimp, green chromis and frozen silverside soaked in selcon.

Do you know what species your silverside is? If not, what brand is it?

For feeding, I'd imagine those shrimp and chromis are fine feed options, but there is the concern using saltwater feeders that they may bring in fish disease that gets the angler sick at some point - to avoid that, the general recommendations at the moment are freshwater ghost shrimp, freshwater guppies, and freshwater mollies (emphasis on the freshwater because that helps prevent them from bringing in disease); you can adapt them from fresh to salt and breed them if you want.

If you want to use saltwater ghost shrimp and peppermint shrimp, then to be safe, you'd want to run them in a separate breeding tank for 60-76 days to eliminate most disease risks.

I thought the ghost shrimp may start breeding but I’ve read they can be cannibalistic.

You can breed the ghost shrimp, and the peppermint shrimp too - you're probably out of luck with the chromis though. If you wanted to breed saltwater feeder fish, clowns would probably be the easiest at this point - to avoid disease issues, I'd do a full, prophylactic treatment QT for the broodstock, then feed the larvae to the angler:

For shrimp specifically, see the links below (the first link is a general shrimp rearing guide, the second is basically tips and info on rearing ghost/grass shrimp specifically):

Breeding Palaemon Elegans (Mediterrane Rock Pool Shrimp) Guide

Hi, Im going to post a breeding guide of palaemon elegans shrimps here. Two females are preparing for spawning so if you are interested you may want to stick with me. This breeding guide will be interchangable for every kind of shrimps but i stick elegans because: - With cleaner shrimp we are...

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Culturing Marine Grass/Ghost Shrimp

Hey everyone! TLDR summary at bottom. I've seen a few people on here ask about how to culture marine ghost/grass shrimp species in their tanks, and the responses I've seen have ranged from it's not possible, to use Google Scholar, to you just add them and they breed. Knowing that Ghost/Grass...

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Some good links for info and discussion on anglers:

So you want a frog fish; I call them anglers

I've kept a few, my first going back 25 years. These are very difficult fish to keep and I am still very frustrated as to the success in keeping these guys long term. I do have some information I would like to share for those interested. Be forewarned, they are not for everyone and do take...

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Frog fish ownership

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...

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Quality of food for predators

These statistics are even reported by the hobbyist magazines you are all familiar with, how predators in the aquarium have a dismal lifespan. Here are some of the numbers I've read; moray eels 2-4 years, volitan lions 3-5 years, dwarf lions 1-2 years, anglers 1-2 years, various scorps and others...

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WHY feed live to the Scorpaenidae

Anyone that have read my threads or post, know that I am a staunce advocate for feeding live food to many species of lions, scorps, and anglers. In this installment let's examine how I came to this adamant position. Be aware that this hobby is never absolute and there are always exceptions. This...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[johnf3]

Do you know what species your silverside is? If not, what brand is it?

For feeding, I'd imagine those shrimp and chromis are fine feed options, but there is the concern using saltwater feeders that they may bring in fish disease that gets the angler sick at some point - to avoid that, the general recommendations at the moment are freshwater ghost shrimp, freshwater guppies, and freshwater mollies (emphasis on the freshwater because that helps prevent them from bringing in disease); you can adapt them from fresh to salt and breed them if you want.

If you want to use saltwater ghost shrimp and peppermint shrimp, then to be safe, you'd want to run them in a separate breeding tank for 60-76 days to eliminate most disease risks.

You can breed the ghost shrimp, and the peppermint shrimp too - you're probably out of luck with the chromis though. If you wanted to breed saltwater feeder fish, clowns would probably be the easiest at this point - to avoid disease issues, I'd do a full, prophylactic treatment QT for the broodstock, then feed the larvae to the angler:

Some good links for info and discussion on anglers:

So you want a frog fish; I call them anglers

I've kept a few, my first going back 25 years. These are very difficult fish to keep and I am still very frustrated as to the success in keeping these guys long term. I do have some information I would like to share for those interested. Be forewarned, they are not for everyone and do take...

www.reef2reef.com

Frog fish ownership

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...

www.reef2reef.com

Quality of food for predators

These statistics are even reported by the hobbyist magazines you are all familiar with, how predators in the aquarium have a dismal lifespan. Here are some of the numbers I've read; moray eels 2-4 years, volitan lions 3-5 years, dwarf lions 1-2 years, anglers 1-2 years, various scorps and others...

www.reef2reef.com

WHY feed live to the Scorpaenidae

Anyone that have read my threads or post, know that I am a staunce advocate for feeding live food to many species of lions, scorps, and anglers. In this installment let's examine how I came to this adamant position. Be aware that this hobby is never absolute and there are always exceptions. This...

www.reef2reef.com

I appreciate the information!

Not sure of the silverside species but these are the ones I’m using currently: https://feederfishfood.com/product/flash-frozen/

Planning on expanding my macro set up with several 10 gallon aquariums. Going to keep trying with these ghost shrimp but also try peppermint shrimp and some other feeder options in each tank and see what works the best! Also will be useful to separate the algaes into each of their own tanks

Yes I’ve heard mixed opinions on feeding freshwater fish. Makes sense for the disease aspect but I’ve read they need the nutrition from specifically saltwater fish/what they’d consume in the wild. Not sure what the best long term option would be for a feeder fish at this point but I’m wondering if the angler would be fine with live shrimp/varied inverts and just frozen fish enriched with selcon? I’ve also thought about going to the fish market and getting a variety of different meats for him to try. I’m just glad he’s accepting frozen foods, makes it a bit easier haha

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Not sure of the silverside species but these are the ones I’m using currently: https://feederfishfood.com/product/flash-frozen/

I'd be really hesitant to feed silversides without knowing the species used, as many "silversides" are high is Thiaminase, which can cause major problems for predatory fish like anglers.

Yes I’ve heard mixed opinions on feeding freshwater fish. Makes sense for the disease aspect but I’ve read they need the nutrition from specifically saltwater fish/what they’d consume in the wild. Not sure what the best long term option would be for a feeder fish at this point but I’m wondering if the angler would be fine with live shrimp/varied inverts and just frozen fish enriched with selcon? I’ve also thought about going to the fish market and getting a variety of different meats for him to try. I’m just glad he’s accepting frozen foods, makes it a bit easier haha

Yeah, angler longevity is one of the mysteries the hobby is still trying to work on, and long-term diet may be a big part of it.

The reason these species (Mollies, Guppies, and Ghost Shrimp) are suggested is because they're actually brackish water species; their nutrition profiles are generally closer to saltwater species than freshwater - they're likely not ideal, but they are (as demonstrated by a number of different aquarists' experiences) not bad.

If you wanted to keep the feeders you use strictly saltwater, the peppermint shrimp (or other shrimp) and clownfish (or other comparatively easy to breed fish species) are probably your best bets. I'd be genuinely curious to see how the angler would do on a purely saltwater fish and occasional shrimp diet.

Anyway, live shrimp is a good addition - I doubt anglers would eat many other inverts, but I may be wrong. Frozen fish can be a good addition if you can get them to eat it (live is generally best as it engages the angler, but frozen would be fine nutritionally). If you can figure out a way to get your fish active and "angling" for prepared foods (like frozen feed), that'd be great.

For meat suggestions, salmon is pretty much the gold standard; mackerel and others (see Jay's list linked in the quote below) are good too. The quote was targeted for an eel, but it deals a lot with thiaminese.

I'd definitely add a bivalve like mussels or clams, they're not only healthy, but they contain a good amount of Vitamin B1 (thiamin), which helps keep predators healthy despite their ingestion of thiaminese.

That said, how long have you had the eels?

What pellets are you using?

For the fish, I've heard that mackerel is pretty good (low thiaminase, good fat, but it's fairly low in protein). Tilapia is still low in thiaminase, but to my understanding it would basically be a filler food as it's low protein and low fat (healthy fats are good for fish and people) - I don't know that I'd remove it, but you may want to look at other options (preferably high protein, low thiaminase options) to replace it with. The post by Jay Hemdal in the link below has a decent list of high thiaminase and low thiaminase fish that you may be able to find. I know salmon is pretty much considered the gold standard, but it can be pretty expensive (and I'd imagine it could be pretty hard to come by in India).

With the shrimp, shrimp is a good feed (and doing the whole shrimp is a good call), but you don't want to feed too much shrimp. Fresh shrimp is best if you can get it - I've heard that you want to be careful how much frozen shrimp you feed because of the thiaminase content (to my understanding, Vitamin B1 degrades over time while the thiaminase is more stable; so the longer the shrimp is frozen, the lower the Vitamin B1 content goes, but the thiaminase content stays the same).

That's all that comes to my mind for the moment - @lion king any thoughts?

Alternative foods for predatory fish

Hello I have some predatory fish (miniatus grouper, clown grouper, tesalata eel, small red tooth trigger) I am currently feed them whole fish sold at my local fish shop but its becoming quite pricey what other alternatives could I fees them from a supermarket?

www.reef2reef.com

Some more good info on predator feeding and what to feed:

Lion King's dead food recommendations

I'm a health nut if you haven't noticed, this also translates to my pets. Today I will cover some of the dead foods I feed and why, with some nutritional info that I recall off the top of my head. This is by no means all the foods you can feed, these are just the ones I include in my feedings...

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The truth about FATS

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Breeding Guppies and Mollies for Saltwater Predators?

My predator tank eats anything you put in it, including your fingers lol. Its best to really research everything you can about the diet of your particular fish. Each of my predator fish is like a dog or cat to me. Ive had one of my eels at least 10 years. Some of the predator species can...

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Also, just a fun fact to end with, the Striated Anglerfish (Antennarius striatus) has a biofluorescent esca (the "lure" of the "fishing pole").