cleaner wrasse things i didnt know

[por2stylz]

cheap fish but now i know why stores want to get rid of them before they starve to death. Recently baught a pair of fish a small OC clown and a cleaner wrasse (blue blk stripes) clown. Put them in my display tank they were in holding tank together no need to quarantine since my tank has been fishless for 4 months. Clown died 48 hrs when i noticed cotton mouth starting and put him in hospital tank died 24 hrs later oh well.

So wrasse is doing amazing zig zaging niping on copods on glass niping live rock (i have no coral so dun worry) but i research the fellow and they say its a fish shouldnt be aloud to be in home aquariums and it affects our wild reef systems oh well blame it on LPS they had it i was like wow coor full for 15 bucks but researched and they feed only on mucus and dead skin n such.

Since i introduced fish the clown dying the next fish has to do the quarantine process so wrassy there wont get any dead skin or mucus any time soon. Any suggestions know mucus stores joke

 

[snorvich]

As a general rule, cleaner wrasses should be left in the ocean. They do not really clean parasites, they actually clean dead skin/scales. In an aquarium, even a large one, there are not enough clients to sustain them and they will harass fish.

I have had them (in the ocean) clean me and have photographs of them cleaning my teeth. (By the way, I don't have ich!)

 

[NCSUsalt]

the big blue/black ones often seen in the trade are from africa/indian ocean and will normally also eat substitue aquarium fare. They ship extremely poorly though

 

[coralnut99]

For years I was stuck with taking care of a tank that we keep in the entrance lobby. The boss hired a "maintenance" co. to care for it. He always wanted to keep it hopelessly overstocked. These guys brought in two big cleaner wrasses. I tried to tell them they wouldn't last, and that's why I never even gave them a thought. Sure enough he brings in not one but big ones. Three weeks.......RIP cleaner wrasses.

As has already been said here, this hobby gets a bad enough rep for bringing things to the market that just don't belong there. These fish are truly one of those things that don't belong in 99.9% of home aquariums. Yes I left an opening there, but a very small one.

 

[The0wn4g3]

At the LFS I used to work at I think we kept maybe 2/7 cleaner wrasses successfully. I don't know why my boss even ordered them after the first 2 died...
It was odd, because most we were able to get to eat brine shrimp but after a few days they would still die. I'm not sure if it was the method that they were caught, or the shipping, or something else, but they definitely shouldn't be kept unless you have a > 300 gallon tank with very peaceful inhabitants... I can tell you it wasn't our end of the process (LFS) that killed them. I'm convinced it's something on the way to the LFS that causes them to die.

 

[Timanator]

I have one in my frag tank. It gets fed twice a day and eats like a pig.

 

[dendro982]

For a start, give smallest pieces of food from pipette. Few times a day, this is a very active swimmer.

Things, I didn't know about cleaner wrasse:
- its reputation
- that there could be mimic cleaner wrasse.
- that it sleeps, hiding in cavernous rock, and after a good feeding may disappear there for a day or two,
- it drives large fish to the verge of becoming crazy from pain, after its pinching of undefended places, and
- wrasse was unable to recognize fish's invitation to cleaning: tilted head, that fish displayed after recognizing cleaner.
Blood shrimp did all the cleaner work, and cleaner wrasse had to be removed to a separate tank, where it was an excellent pet by itself. It's difficult to keep separate tank just for wrasse.

 

[Runfrumu]

i had one for several months, and he ate flake food, but also liked to pick at clams. I was kind of happy when I found him on the carpet.

They are very interesting to watch.

 

[Flavum]

you were kina happy when you found him on the carpet?

wow even if he was picking at your clams thats kinda harsh. maybe next time dont buy animals you dont know anything about.

 

[stargazer=2]

i had one in our old 125 gal for over 3yrs it ate what ever we fed the tank just liked tiny peices.we got out of the hobby for awile and wound up with a 75gal again .we have another cleaner wrasse and it is the same as the other one it eats what ever we feed the tank tiny peices we have it about 8 months now and it is doing fine jme.it does pest the other fish at times but at other times the other fish will role over to be cleaned.

 

[chrisstie]

I would think if you're unsure about keeping this guy or if he harrasses your fish too much you could try contacting a local aquarium and see if they have a tank that would be large enough to benefit from one of these guys. There would be enough fish that they wouldn't be harrassed to death and the little guy could feed.

Good luck trying the above methods to get him to eat prepared foods first. I wish there was a way we, as hobbyists, could lobby the harvesters to leave these guys in the ocean.

 

[acrylic_300]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13969235#post13969235 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Flavum
you were kina happy when you found him on the carpet?

wow even if he was picking at your clams thats kinda harsh. maybe next time dont buy animals you dont know anything about.

It's amazing how aggravating it can be to watch a fish destroying a tank and not being able to catch it.

A lot of reef safe fish can go bad. It's hit and miss.

In reality we are all torturing these animals just by keeping them. We judge their happiness by how big our tanks are, but none of them are as happy as they would be before they were captured.

So before judging someone for not knowing anything about fish, remember that none of them belong in a tank to begin with.

I had a fish that died without disappointing me and a couple more that won't disappoint me when they die.

 

[mborn]

Since you already have the fish and they eat dead-dying fish skin, why not go to your local seafood market and buy a whole fish or fish fillet with the skin still on and cut a patch of skin off and put it in a lettuce clip in your tank like a piece of nori for a tang (you could also try rubber banding it to a small rock as well). I’ve never tried this (nor have I ever owned a cleaner wrasse), and I definitely don’t recommend anyone buy a cleaner wrasse to try this, but since you already have the fish it would be interesting to see if it would work. If it does, the wrasse would have a limitless supply of skin to feed on and you could buy several different types of fillets to give him some variety.

 

[Chad Vossen]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13982408#post13982408 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mborn
Since you already have the fish and they eat dead-dying fish skin, why not go to your local seafood market and buy a whole fish or fish fillet with the skin still on and cut a patch of skin off and put it in a lettuce clip in your tank like a piece of nori for a tang (you could also try rubber banding it to a small rock as well). I’ve never tried this (nor have I ever owned a cleaner wrasse), and I definitely don’t recommend anyone buy a cleaner wrasse to try this, but since you already have the fish it would be interesting to see if it would work. If it does, the wrasse would have a limitless supply of skin to feed on and you could buy several different types of fillets to give him some variety.

the idea that cleaner wrasses need dead skin to survive is new to me. i think this is only an anecdotal observation, as others in this thread have aparently kept cleaner wrasses without problems. putting chunks of dead fish in your tank would likely be a bad idea, as one of the first things people point out when someone is having problems is "could you have a dead fish stuck behind your rocks?". adding a chunk of dead fish all the time could be a big mistake.

 

[mborn]

armagedon48,

I don’t know where on this thread it was said that they “need dead skin to survive” (in captivity). I didn’t say that. But dead skin is in the natural diet of cleaner wrasses and I was proposing an easy way to provide it to them. Kudos to the people who have had success with this fish on prepared aquarium foods, but they are the exception, not the rule. By reputation, it’s more common for this fish to reject these types’ foods and starve to death. But my point isn’t to debate this.

Just to clear things up, I never said put “chunks of fish” in your tank, nor did I say put or leave them in “all the time” and I certainly never said let it sit and rot in your tank like your example of a “dead fish stuck behind your rocks” implies. I said cut a “patch” or flap of skin (i.e. separate it from the meat with a sharp knife) and put it in a lettuce clip (i.e. for easy placement in the tank and easy removal from the tank). I used the example of feeding nori to tangs, and in this forum I assumed most people would be familiar with this feeding technique. When feeding this way, one needs to use common sense. Don’t clip a large amount of food that can’t be readily consumed and/or pull the clip with uneaten food out of the tank when the fish no longer show interest. I highly doubt a small flap of skin sitting in a clip for an hour or so on a daily basis is going to foul a fully cycled tank. It certainly wouldn’t foul mine. As I said, I simply threw out the idea as an easy way to provide a natural food source to a very difficult to keep fish. It could also be a way to get particularly difficult specimens of this wrasse initially eating in the aquarium until they learn to accept other foods that they wouldn’t naturally eat in the wild.

 

[Wrench]

I don't know where cleaner wrasses get the label of being a poor fish in captivity. I have gotten many of them (through a wholesaler) for myself and club members and only had two of them die. Those two were DOA along with several other fish in the same box so i attribute it to poor packing/handling. The rest of the cleaner wrasses that we've gotten, which is well over 20 fish, are all still alive over a year later.

These are a great fish when they're added to an appropriate system. That being said I also feel that they do need a healthy fish population to survive whether or not they feed off of parasites, mucus or skin cells.

 

[chrisstie]

It may or may not be so much of an issue of poor fish in captivity, however we are taking an important fish out of the wild that provides services to other fish. This affects quite a few species, not just one.

 

[Wrench]

The same can be said for every fish that is caught for this hobby. There is no shortage of cleaner wrasses in the wild.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Wrench, I am not sure either of your contentions is well supported. I think that some fairly credible research has been done showing that the common cleaner wrasse is hard to keep alive due to specific diet needs and that their removal from the reefs has become problematic. The same is not true of evey fish caught for the hobby. Some fishes play more of a key role in the balance of the reefs health than others. The cleaner wrasse is one of those fish.

Many will live a year or so in captivity, but are still slowly being starved to death.

 

[Wrench]

My contentions are based purely on my personal experience as opposed to hearsay like many things I hear on these forums. I pulled my records and between Apr.07 and Aug.07 I got 23 cleaner wrasses of which two died in shipping which don't seem like bad odds. I'd venture to guess that we've lost more "hardy" fish in shipping than that. Of the remaining 21 fish 2 have died recently during tank moves and the rest are all thriving, which once again, not bad odds. All of the fish were placed in large, established tanks and 6 of them have formed pairs.