lionfish weened off live food in a reef tank

[Fish Stix]

I have a lionfish roughly 10-12" that I have painstakingly weened off live foods and is now in with plenty of things it could eat but doesn't, including damsels, shrimp, and strawberry crabs.

Question is, even without the issue of him eating his tank mates...would it still be more trouble than it's worth to include him in a 180 reef tank? I'm thinking bioload and just constantly having my hands in the tank placing corals or LR or whatnot.

He eats probably a quarter lb of food every other day,a combination of nls, algae wafers and raw seafood. Also as he gets older he is becoming human aggressive...not sure if this is common but he charges and bites at hands and cleaning utensils.

I'm just tossing it around because it was very hard weening him off live foods and I would like to keep him, but I am converting to reef and starting a separate tank for him is out of the question at this moment.

 

[ichthyogeek]

Hmm...basing this off of the fact that lionfish don't need daily heavy feedings, but I guess it could work. You'd need a larger skimmer or similar filtration system to catch all the waste. He'd probably take up too much space for you to add many fish. Also, put other fish in first, as he might get super agressive to newcomers as well.

Algae wafers? Aren't lionfish carnivores? Are you feeding him to satiation?

What are you feeding him with? He may have inadvertently associated your hand with food, so whenever he sees the hand, he'll think food, and go to it...

 

[billsreef]

Bioload can easily be designed for in your filtration set up, so isn't really an issue IMO. The hands in tank thing, is something to seriously consider. Especially since he's likely to come right to your hand. Makes it easy to bump into those pesky spines. A second pair of hands and a net to keep the lionfish at the other end of the tank would help with safety, and even then, always keep one eye on the lionfish no matter what else your doing or what else is going on in the room around you while your hands are in the tank

 

[Big Dog]

That's a lot of food to be feeding!!! Getting stung ain't no fun, don't ask me how I know ......

 

[Fish Stix]

Ok well thank you for the opinions... I definitely don't want to get stung,even if bio load weren't an issue. Seems to be a toss up there...

If he eats this much now I am sure he will be eating perhaps a lb every other day by the time he is 15-18"....that was more the bio load concern I was concerned about.

Im not concerned about how much he eats, don't get me wrong. I have kept nearly every fish Jeremy Wade has caught on the end of his line...so I have experience with large fish and how much they eat (sw fish have even higher metabolisms)... Just not keeping them with corals.

I just figured figured a lionfish capable of even being considered for a reef tank (behavior-wise) was likely few and far between, and as such deemed it worthy of the advanced topic section.