Skairik,
Having any fish alive for 1 1/2 years is good but not a sucess as their natural life span is a whole lot longer than that.
But you are doing something right with him as he's been kept alive for that long. As for only keeping 1% of the fish alive, then I must not be the norm. 95% of my fish are well over a year old, some of my large tangs are over 4 years old and I've had some as long as 6 years before I had a bubble coral spawn in the tank and caused a crash because of the closed system.
Also for those who don't know, their is a higher mortaility rate on blue tangs in the wholesalers holding facilities than on MI's. It took a while but I finally got one to admit it. MI's have been a diffulicult fish to keep in the past but things are progressing as our husbandry improves in this hobby. If we didn't take the time to learn and try, then we would never have gotten past the stage of damsels and softy corals that survived for a year or so in our tanks. WE are keeping more and more harder to keep specimens in our tanks now so to say no one but an expert should keep a MI is throwing away all that we've learned in the past to get where we are today.
If some of you would take the time to do a little research before flaming everyone who says they have or want to keep a MI, you may stumble onto a few threads here on RC that are loaded with information from those who have been keeping them alive for over 2 years.
Most people who have kept them do not like to post because of the flaming that happens so fast on here. So before you start flaming away on someone for keeping a MI, take a step back and really think about it. AS was stated before, don't just follow and perpetuate the unfounded rumors that keep flying around.
Oh and as for the Long Beach Aquarium, if you talk to them as I did, they have lost a bunch of MI's theirselves in their strive to keep them alive. Seems they can only keep them alive in the outdoor shark pool. And those that are in there have been there since they opened some what 6 years or more ago.
But there are people here on RC who have kept them alive in their tanks for over 2 years, and there's even one thats been around for about 5 years or so now.
