lyretails anthias

[pcbaseball]

hey i'm in the process of getting a school of these guys for my 300 reef. i'm thinging about getting a school of 6 females, but i have a few questions. For one is it true that it is better to get all females and let the most dominate one change to male. Also is 6 enough to mimimize agression or is more needed. Also in terms of feeding, i know people say these guys need daily feeding like 2 or 3 times daily, but is this really neseccary. Also if so what do you do when your away on a trip and cant feed them the proper amount of times

thanks

 

[pcbaseball]

anyone?

 

[tryffin]

I've heard of people getting all females or one male and bunch of females and both ways being fine. I've also heard a couple people say here that more than one may (eventually) turn into a male in a large enough group.

I personally have 3 of them ... I give them the normal evening feeding plus a bit of enriched brine in the morning before I go to work ... after about two months they've finally started to eat some flake and freeze-dried plankton. I got all females, just because they're alot more common than the males, a bit cheaper, and I think it's fun watching fish grow and change

 

[pcbaseball]

hey thanks for the reply, but what do most of you guys do when you go out of town with these fish and cant get someone to feed them for you

 

[edwar050]

I dont have anthias but set up my tank for them. I bought two wal-mart automatic feeders at 8.88 that run off batteries. Just have to check to make sure batteries are ok. Feed very small ammounts four times a day of cyclopeeze, flake and pellet.

 

[tryffin]

I haven't been away since I've had my reef tank I'd love to go to carribean for a vacation, but I'm not sure if there's anyone I trust enough to look after my tank while I'm gone for a couple weeks...

I think I'd just get someone to feed them once a day, I'm more worried about the CBB than the anthais. But that's a good idea, get one of those auto-feeders and put some freeze-dried plankton or cyclop-eeze dry food for them, to be dispersed in the morning or even morning and lunchtime, and get someone to give them some meaty foods now and then.

I've only had my anthias for a short period of time, but they seem fairly hardy ... I don't think they're as delicate as the others in this family ... they will happily wolf down food anytime though, the only fish I have who is "hungrier" is my pygmy angel.

 

[KLoomis]

Definitely recommend feeding them often during the first month or two, get them as fat as you possibly can. My 2 cents, get all females, I have had both all females, and 3 females with one male, the females by themselves do much better from my observations.

 

[Angel*Fish]

I would feed them twice a day
For vacation get someone in once a day
I think 6-8 is supposed to be a good number. if you get too many, you might wind up with more than 1 male which can create problems

Good luck - post pictures!

 

[KLoomis]

Angel fish,

in your tank discription, you list Tukas, how long have you had them? any problems with them?

 

[Angel*Fish]

I've had them for 3 mo. and 2 weeks. They are very difficult. I've only been able to get them to eat live artemia nauplii & that is not complete nutrition - so now I'm growing them out longer & gut loading them. One tuka has been more robust from the beginning and seems to be doing ok so far. The other one I think may have intestinal flagellates & I can't get him to take his medicine, so if he has them, I think he's a goner

My guess at this point, & it's only a guess, is that fish larvae may be a large part of their natural diet & I have not figured out a way to provide this for them.

I don't plan on pursuing this any further if neither of them makes it. There are too many pretty anthias out there which are easier to feed.

The longest success story I could find was 10 mo.

 

[KLoomis]

Hopefully they will hang in there and start eating more/different foods. I ordered 5 tukas (all female) from the lfs that I worked at, one was dead in the bag and the other 4 survived for 2 months or so (tank crashed and killed everything, but that is a different story). I had the tukas with an evansi, 6 disparââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢s (females), square spot male and 3 females, and a fathead. They were all doing great (the tank had very little light while they were being acclimated for a couple months), I started them with live adult brine and live mysis, after a few weeks they all ate frozen brine, mysis, and Cyclops (until the tank crashed that is).

 

[blstravler]

I started with 8 lyertails, 1 male and 7 female. The male jumped out. Then I had 2 females go male. Eventually they battled down to 1. Since then a dominant female had come up and killed off the other females. So I am down two a pair that are vey devoted to eachother. They display at ngiht as soon as the MH's go out. Very cool to watch. Oh and all of this took about 3 years in my 180 reef. They eat everything, and I mean everything I put in the tank.