Keeping a Flame Angel?

[Lewis2000]

Hello,
I have always wanted to buy a flame angelfish for my 55 gallon reef, However i am hesitant to purchase one due to their expensive price and temperamental issues.

My LFS has a very nice flame angel, brightly coloured, looks very healthy, eating well and in perfect shape. My LFS said that they are very temperamental and can do great and then suddenly die unexpectedly for no reason, and if you succeed more than 3 months then it will last a long time. She did reassure me saying that she has sold many flame angels and not one person has returned with any problems. At £70 i am still worried, due to the fish not being that hardy.

Questions:
1. Has anyone had luck keeping these fish?
2. Is there any special requirements needed?
3. Are they a generally hardy fish?
4. Will it do well in my tank?
5. Should i be worrying about this purchase?
6. How long is recommended to acclimate this fish?

sorry for all the questions........... Thanks in advance, Lewis:rollface:

 

[Kidd Reef]

Hello,
I have always wanted to buy a flame angelfish for my 55 gallon reef, However i am hesitant to purchase one due to their expensive price and temperamental issues.

My LFS has a very nice flame angel, brightly coloured, looks very healthy, eating well and in perfect shape. My LFS said that they are very temperamental and can do great and then suddenly die unexpectedly for no reason, and if you succeed more than 3 months then it will last a long time. She did reassure me saying that she has sold many flame angels and not one person has returned with any problems. At £70 i am still worried, due to the fish not being that hardy.

Questions:
1. Has anyone had luck keeping these fish?
2. Is there any special requirements needed?
3. Are they a generally hardy fish?
4. Will it do well in my tank?
5. Should i be worrying about this purchase?
6. How long is recommended to acclimate this fish?

sorry for all the questions........... Thanks in advance, Lewis:rollface:

1.Plenty of aquarist's have had luck with these fish. They're quite popular and so pretty that many people choose to keep them despite the The possibility of them potential nipping corals.

2.You'll want to have well established tank with plenty of the right types of algae for them to pick at as they are constant grazers, you can also supplement their diet with Nori sheet's i believe.

Also be aware that Flame angels, As natural Grazers tend to constantly float around picking at things. Sometimes this includes Corals and clam mantles, and while in larger tanks with plenty of grazing food and space damage is usually minimal, In a tank such as 50 you might want to consider theres a chance he could end up going to the dark side. At that point you'd have to decide between the corals or the fish

3.I have never kept them personally but have dealt with them alot in the somewhat short term as i used to work at a LFS. Based on that experience alone i'd say they fall somewhat inbetween hardy and sensitive. One thing is can particularly sensitive to medications like copper which are commonly used in treating ich.

4. Again no personal experience here but most People will tell you you'll be fine. Ive seen them kept in 40 breeders though im not saying id do that perosnally. I've heard alot of people say that they were amazed with how much ground they covered in larger tanks and couldnt imagine them in anything smaller than a 100 gallon. But again thats all debatable.

5. I cant really answer this question with 100% without knowing what other fish you have.

Barring an overstocked or a tank housing Incompatible tankmates i would say as long you as you have a well established tank, Plenty of swimming room and most importantly follow Proper Quarantine procedures, you should be fine.

6. i hope your going to be acclimating it to a QT and not putting it immediaely into the DT.

In either case i personally drip acclimate them for 20-30 minutes(as long as the salinity difference isnt too much.)

Hope this helps!

 

[Lewis2000]

Thank you very much for the thourogh information you gave me. In terms of quarantine tank I have a 7 gallon nano which I recently used to treat ich with, the fish are now in the DT and are doing great. Would that size of tank be efficient to hold a flame angel? How long should I quarantine the flame for?, and do I treat it in QT as a precaution (not copper but a reef safe medication)?

In terms of stocking I have a gramma, yellow tailed damsel (both treated for ich) and added a matured pair of black ice clownfish.

Thanks in advance, lewis

 

[OrionN]

I would consider Flame angels easy angel to keep. They picks on the rocks hunting fauna and essentially eat everything I put in my tank. You do need a well run tank, stable. I always have reef tank, not FOWLR. My nitrates always not detectable.
In this setting, my Flame angel spawn all the time. I have 3 in my 320 gal tank. The dominant one is the male and the others are females. Almost every night one of my two females would spawn. Sometime both would spawn just as the light goes out.
Certainly they are much easier to keep than Regal angel or Copperband Butterfly.

 

[Kidd Reef]

Thank you very much for the thourogh information you gave me. In terms of quarantine tank I have a 7 gallon nano which I recently used to treat ich with, the fish are now in the DT and are doing great. Would that size of tank be efficient to hold a flame angel? How long should I quarantine the flame for?, and do I treat it in QT as a precaution (not copper but a reef safe medication)?

In terms of stocking I have a gramma, yellow tailed damsel (both treated for ich) and added a matured pair of black ice clownfish.

Thanks in advance, lewis

Many would say say a 55 is sufficient with a pygmy angel, Though thats only if he isnt a bother to corals and doesnt have a problem with any of your current inhabitants in my opinion, and i cant comment on how it would work out in the long termas i dont have enough personal experience with flame angels being housed with those species to give you a safe answer, Best to do a bit of research and decide if the pro's and con's make the flame angel right for your tank. Maybe someone else on here with some experience with Flame angels in smaller tanks can chime in.

As far as Quarantine i'd reccomend doing doing TTM(tank transfer method.) followed by a least 2 rounds of prazi and another 4-6 weeks of observation. This may sound extensive but its for a variet of reasons, One being that if the fish comes from a store that runs low levels of copper it can mask symptoms of disease such as velvet for 3-4 weeks. also ich and some other parasites can get by visual detection with the fish showing little or no visible symptoms.

EDIT: Decided to just give you the link instead of having another paragraph typed out explainin and leaving you to search for it.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2388428

shoutouts to snorvich for Spreading the reefing knowledge.

Hope this helps!