Experience With Purple Queen Anthias - Must feed often

[ReefJunkie01]

I know the purple queen is considered to be amongst the most difficult, but FWIW I have been able to successfully get both princess and evansi anthias to feed aggressively on the SF ocean plankton. It's slightly bigger than cyclopeeze, but still small enough that these planktivores 'see' it as food. Although I did have a parasite problem with my evansi, unrelated to feeding, both they and the princess have been with me for over 4 months and I've been able to keep them at a healthy weight based on 3 feedings a day. Whether this would translate to the purple queen I cannot say, though it may be worth a try.

Maintaining them on the ocean plankton also allows them time to begin to try brine and small mysis. Both of mine wil regularly take the former now, and occasionally 'accidentally' eat a Mysid.

Thanks ca1ore, I'm going to have to try that. If it works for the princess anthias, I'm guessing it's a good shot. I tried looking for a place to pick it up, but can't seem to find it, will have to keep looking. I also ordered some golden pearls from brineshrimpdirect, so gonna see how those go as well later this week.

 

[ca1ore]

Thanks ca1ore, I'm going to have to try that. If it works for the princess anthias, I'm guessing it's a good shot. I tried looking for a place to pick it up, but can't seem to find it, will have to keep looking.

I end up ordering it from DFS - 10 flats at a time!

 

[ca1ore]

Made my first BlueZoo order (all 'difficult' fish) today and included is a six-pack of small Tuka females. Apparently I have no will power. Due to arrive Friday, so fingers crossed they come in well. Other than jumpers , I've had success with most of the other hard to keep species so thought I'd try my hand again with the grand daddy of PITA fish. Time to go down to the local bank and retrieve my stash of Nutramar Ova :lol:

 

[ca1ore]

The thoughts of "this is a fish that should be left in the oceans" is a statement that often indicates the one making that statement thinks too highly of their own skills or too lowly of other aquarists skills. In the first instance there is the thought of "I am an experienced aquarist and if I cant keep them they are impossible" or in the second example a cynic that has seen too many people fail.

As I was going back though this thread I noticed this. Had I seen it earlier, I would have commented, because I could not disagree more. I really don't see how 'this fish/animal should be left in the ocean' has any bearing at all on what I might think of my own skills, nor any kind of referendum on anyone else's - good or bad. Simply that some animals have such a poor survival rate in captivity that it seems largely pointless to continue to collect them - what percentage of these fish actually survive, say, even 6 month in captivity. I bet it's less than 1%.

Now, at the risk of some hypocrisy, I did recently purchase five purple queens; and in this case I am guilty of believing my skills as a reef keeper are superior to most and that my purchasing of them does mean a better (though likely still poor) prognosis for survival.

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I have had them for 2 days, so the QT lights are still dimmed: but all (including the one Evansi male) are eating nutramar ova, and a couple are even eating the slightly larger reef plankton.

 

[ca1ore]

At the risk of simply talking to myself ....

Five Tukas are doing well after one week (does that count as 'success'? :lol all eating nutramar ova. Have a stash of it that I figure will last through the Summer, so have that long to convince them to eat other stuff. Two of the five will eat hikari mysis. They show some interest in the ocean plankton, but none in frozen brine. Evansi in QT with them is the 'dither' fish and pretty much eats everything. Lights fully up at this point.

Haven't tried hatching out brine nauplii in many years (always seemed like a heck of a lot of trouble) but may do that again. Work from a home office, and travel is light during the Summer so I can tend to them appropriately.

 

[tquinlan]

This article covers a lot of the husbandry of these fish:

http://www.reefsmagazine.com/forum/reefs-magazine/71849-boldly-colored-beauties-tuka-anthias.html

The oldest P. tuka described here is now about 8 years old, which may be the oldest in captivity in the world.

A note about feeding Artemia nauplii--the best way to keep them at their most nutritious for up to 24 hours is by cooling them to between 40-50F immediately after hatching as it will lower their metabolism without killing them. Even just allowing naups to live for a few hours at room temp will significantly reduce their nutritional value. Temperature shock is a non-issue as naups will begin moving within a few seconds upon being exposed to a reef tank.

 

[tquinlan]

Haven't tried hatching out brine nauplii in many years (always seemed like a heck of a lot of trouble) but may do that again. Work from a home office, and travel is light during the Summer so I can tend to them appropriately.

It is quite simple really, a 2L bottle, tank water, and an air pump are sufficient to do it.

I would suggest buying decapsulated cysts if you can, as the nutritional value is much better. They are more expensive. You can decapsulate your own cysts at home but it's not simple and makes quite a mess. Not really worth the trouble for small amounts.

 

[ca1ore]

This article covers a lot of the husbandry of these fish:

http://www.reefsmagazine.com/forum/reefs-magazine/71849-boldly-colored-beauties-tuka-anthias.html

The oldest P. tuka described here is now about 8 years old, which may be the oldest in captivity in the world.

A note about feeding Artemia nauplii--the best way to keep them at their most nutritious for up to 24 hours is by cooling them to between 40-50F immediately after hatching as it will lower their metabolism without killing them. Even just allowing naups to live for a few hours at room temp will significantly reduce their nutritional value. Temperature shock is a non-issue as naups will begin moving within a few seconds upon being exposed to a reef tank.

That's the article I alluded to in post #3. A good read if one is attempting these fish. In my case, futzing around with hatching brine won't be necessary as all five of my Tukas are now eating ova, LRS and hikari mysis.

 

[tquinlan]

Cool! I may have missed it in the previous posts but how long did it take for them to eat Hikari mysis?

Have you tried tobiko, masago, or ROE by Reef Nutrition?

 

[ca1ore]

Cool! I may have missed it in the previous posts but how long did it take for them to eat Hikari mysis?

Have you tried tobiko, masago, or ROE by Reef Nutrition?

I have had them for about 10 days. They're in my QT system so I can feed them 8-10 times per day without any problems. I've got just about everything imaginable in my fish food freezer. Ova they took right away, cyclopeeze as well, but both of them are 'unobtanium' at the moment. I feed my other small anthias the ocean plankton with good success, but these Tukas were not interested. Adult brine equally ignored. Tried masago roe; not interested. So I mixed some mushed up hikari mysis with the ova and they ate it. Same with LRS. Now four out of the five will eat the whole shrimp; the fifth just bits so far.

 

[shred5]

Has anyone tried to introduce these fish with ignitus or some other very peaceful but easy to feed anthias?

I find allot of anthias mix rather well and they learn from each other.. My ignitus are very aggressive eaters..

 

[ca1ore]

I always do that with hard to feed fish. In my case, I have an evansi in with the Tukas.

 

[tquinlan]

Keep trying masago in a week or so, they should take it eventually.

Another good one is really finely chopped clam, like the size of cyclopeeze.

 

[ca1ore]

Well, like I said, got just about every combination/permutation of fish food in the freezer; so we shall see.

 

[ReefJunkie01]

Was trolling the forum and remembered this thread, so thought to give an update.

The feeder system I had going is still doing well, and, happy to say, both of my purple queens are doing very well. Not sure if I had posted this before, but, one of my purple queens started eating frozen food about 1 1/2 to 2 months ago (now it's one of the most aggresive frozen food eaters in the tank at feeding time), and, the second just started eating frozen about 2 weeks ago.

Both will actually now outswim and almost outcompete my two 2 clownfish for food (which is fine, because the purple queens will only go after the 1/8" and smaller pieces, where the clowns have at it with the pieces bigger than that). So, long story short, the system seems to have worked.

I changed the system a little, actually have a rigid airline tubing line running into the tank with a nozzle that basically jet-streams the baby brine into the tank at mid level. To prevent back siphoning, a section of the tubing runs about an inch above the water line an has a 2mm hole, which allows air to fill the line when the system isn't feeding.

Ca1ore, congrats man, I wish you the best of luck with these fish, they really are awesome fish, just a hell of a lot of work at first.

 

[ReefJunkie01]

edited as it was a double post

 

[shred5]

Was trolling the forum and remembered this thread, so thought to give an update.

The feeder system I had going is still doing well, and, happy to say, both of my purple queens are doing very well. Not sure if I had posted this before, but, one of my purple queens started eating frozen food about 1 1/2 to 2 months ago (now it's one of the most aggresive frozen food eaters in the tank at feeding time), and, the second just started eating frozen about 2 weeks ago.

Both will actually now outswim and almost outcompete my two 2 clownfish for food (which is fine, because the purple queens will only go after the 1/8" and smaller pieces, where the clowns have at it with the pieces bigger than that). So, long story short, the system seems to have worked.

I changed the system a little, actually have a rigid airline tubing line running into the tank with a nozzle that basically jet-streams the baby brine into the tank at mid level. To prevent back siphoning, a section of the tubing runs about an inch above the water line an has a 2mm hole, which allows air to fill the line when the system isn't feeding.

Ca1ore, congrats man, I wish you the best of luck with these fish, they really are awesome fish, just a hell of a lot of work at first.

Very nice job sounds like you are over the hump..

Most of these hard to keep fish just need someone who has the time to spend working with them..

 

[ca1ore]

Well, three weeks in and I still have all 5 of the tuka, along with the three evansi that function as dither fish. I'm feeding them 5 times a day on average. Some of the will take brine, others mysis, most LRS, and all ova. Planning on putting them into my mellow 90.

 

[caribfan]

So happy to hear of your success, I'd really like some Tukas one day.

 

[caribfan]

Oh, I forgot, any pics or videos of them eating?