Anthias Question

[Meaty24]

I have a 175g and keep adding purple queen anthias. I also have a few others as well, but they slowly die. I am not losing any other fish and water quality is perfect.

I love the look of tons of anthias swimming actively front and center. Are you not suppose to keep different types of anthias in the same tank? Can you mix males and females? Will a variety of species and sexes stress the fish out until they die?

Help me please so I stop wasting money and killing fish. Cause' that stinks.

 

[minhvu]

Purple queen anthias are best left in the ocean. They are very hard to feed. If u like anthias then I would recommend lyretail, dispar, or barletts. They are hardy and beautiful. Keep one male to a harem of female. I keep both lyretail and dispar in my tank

 

[sanchoy]

PQA = people quit asking

Purple queen Anthias (PQA) are one of the most finicky fishes in the saltwater trade. I bought 3 awhile back ago, all died due to starvation. However, the LFS insisted they were hardy (LFS did not know anything).. Just do your research, and don't instinct buy.. very bad mistake.

PQA are a waste of money. Instead spend it on other anthias.

 

[SDguy]

Look into lyretails or bartletts. They are some of the hardiest, and prettiest, anthias you can get. QT them, get them eating, deworm them, and you are good to go.

 

[Nova101]

+1 on the comments about the purple queens.

Switch to Lyretails or something similar.

In general, you can mix male and females. You can keep a single male and several females. The tricky part is getting the 1 male and females. Multiple males will fight. So when you buy then, you need to get a set that has been together and includes 1 male or you must buy a bunch of females. One of the females will become dominant and become male. In the later case, you want to buy the females so that one is bigger than the others and easily becomes dominant. Otherwise some females may fight in order to become dominant.

Be very careful buying a male and females sight unseen. There was just a post yesterday about someone buying a male and females. But they clearly were not kept together as one of the females was showing signs of becoming male. The transformation to male is a one-way process. In essence they sold him a 2 males which is going to cause a fight.

Also realize that in order to keep anthias you will need to feed them 2-3 times per day. Be sure your tank can handle that kind of feeding or you will have a hairy mess...

 

[Santoki]

Since we are on the subject of anthias, what are those of you who have kept them more than a year feeding them?
I've been feeding my Bartletts F1 Flakes and Spectrum pellets, but I feel that their color are not what they used to be. I've tried mysis, but they don't seem to like them much, which surprised me.
-R

 

[SDguy]

Since we are on the subject of anthias, what are those of you who have kept them more than a year feeding them?
I've been feeding my Bartletts F1 Flakes and Spectrum pellets, but I feel that their color are not what they used to be. I've tried mysis, but they don't seem to like them much, which surprised me.
-R

Mine will eat any small meaty foods; all sorts of mysis brands (Hikari, H2O Life, PE), plankton, frozen Formula 1. Minced raw shrimp and scallop from the grocery store they go nuts over!

 

[Santoki]

SDguy,
how many do you have in your harem?
-R

 

[SDguy]

Lyretails? I just lost my big male after 3.5 years. So I now have one turning male, and two females...

 

[Santoki]

hmm. I too have only 3 in my harem. I thought at first that perhaps being in larger groups causes them to be less picky eaters.
I will try some different brand foods.
Although I still think it's strange that they eat flakes but not frozen mysis. Perhaps mine are not fresh anymore...
-R

 

[SDguy]

My fish prefer certain mysis brands over others... I forget which at this point, but I do remember they were picky about the brand :lol:

 

[Amazon4]

Mine tend to like the smaller bits of food vs. the larger bits. For example PE mysis would be the last of the mysis they would prefer. They also love the home made fish goo.

I have lyretails and bimacs.

 

[smoothdog]

Be careful if buying dispars, apparently some wholesalers will bunch similar looking anthias into a "dispar" shipment and if your lfs does not take the time to ID them you can get something else. I ended up with 2 ignitus and a bicolor this way. :lol: I found this out after finding a second store selling ignitus as dispar. For the record, I've had them about a month now and they have fared much better than the dispars I have tried in the past that would never eat. I feed Rod's mixed with additional cyclopeeze and mysis or whatever else I happen to buy for variety. The ignitus go nuts over the cyclopeeze.