8" Zebra Dwarf Lionfish

[Jon321]

Has anyone actually grown a zebra dwarf lionfish to the maximum sizes quoted in most books/websites? Up to 8" is common and Ive even seen some sources say 10", but I have never seen/heard of these sizes being reached in the aquarium.

I purchased my current zebra dwarf lionfish almost 1.5 years ago at about 2" and its barely reached 4" in total length. This lionfish is solitary in a 40g reef tank and was weaned on saltwater feeders. It is fed 3 times a week with a varied diet of frozen shrimp, scallop, octopus, silverside, krill, and freeze dried krill. Food is soaked in zoe, selcon, and garlic extreme.

Im just wondering if I should expect this fish to still double in size or if it has likely experienced most of its growth?

Thanks for any insight,

Jon

 

[namxas]

Actually, no. IME with many lions, the amount of growth you can expect from a lion is generally about 75% of the WC maximum size.

Another thing to consider is that there are two ways of measuring fish:

Standard Length (SL) where the fish is measured from the tip of the snout to the caudal peduncle.

Total Length (TL) where the entire length of the fish is taken into consideration, including the caudal fin.

If you consider the length of the tail fin of most fish, there can be a very big discrepancy between TL and SL numbers. Thus, it's always important to state "TL" or "SL" after your measurement.

I have no doubt that as hard as we try to feed our fish well, there's SOMETHING we're missing nutritionally that results in slightly smaller tank-grown specimens. BTW, it sounds like you're doing a super job with your fish nutritionally speaking.

HTH

 

[FMarini]

greg-
why is it nutrition thats missing?
are you familiar w/ tank stunting. There is a wonderful thread in the advanced reefkeeping section on max fish size. In general, most predatory fish will grow and achieve approx 75% of their wild maximum size, whereas numerous other non predatory fish will stunt dramatically. What doesnt make sense it why P volitans will pretty much reach maximum size, whereas the small and midbodies lion will not max out. I was able to raise a P Radiata to 10 SL, but in general the radiata's i keep never reach more than 7-8"

 

[seahorsedreams]

please delete

 

[namxas]

Hiyas Frank!

Yes, I'm familiar with tank stunting, but it seems that I read years ago that while it was common in FW species, it was not the so much the case in marine fish. Granted, it was in one of the older/probably outdated by now books.

IME, with 3 specimens of P. volitans, Only our current specimen has reached a solid12" SL (or about 80% of the 15" max one normally sees listed). Now, out of the other two (back in the days before anyone knew better), one was fed a semi-poor diet of mixed frozen and FD krill, and the other never weaned, and died as a result of being fed a steady diet of rosy reds, so I can't really say that they had a "real" chance to grow.

All of our other Scorpaenformes have reached the 75%-ish size we generally speak of.

We see the same thing with CB SH too, altho based on some WC fish Renee had in Corpus that never weaned (they were fed live grass shrimp from the Gulf because she could wade out and catch them for the SH) and did indeed reach their full adult size, one would assume that it's a nutritional issue.

m definitely going to try and find the thread you mentioned. Doyou recall if it pinpoints the biological mechanism of "tank stunting"?

 

[LisaD]

I wonder if it would change things if length posted was not MAX ever, but average adult WC length?