Moorish Idols

[Paul B]

I don't have a picture of it but it looks exactly like encrusting mushrooms on rotting wood. It's kind of fleshy looking and very common. Most of it grows close to the wood and it is hard to collect it like that but in many places it extends off the wood for an inch or two and it is easy to just rip it off with your hand. You will see it, the rest of the growths on docks are sea squirts and seaweed.
Paul

 

[ralphie16]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10000661#post10000661 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Paul B
Ralphie it's Bronx, sorry. I can't believe I spelled that wrong, I have to go there tomorrow.......I will try to get the exact name of the restaurant and see if any sponge is there now.
Paul
[/IMG]

Did you get a chance to go out? Did you see any sponges? I plan on going this afternoon.

 

[Paul B]

I was there and the sponges are there but they are fairly small yet. You can collect them but it will take a while due to their size.
Paul

 

[honda2sk]

.

 

[ralphie16]

honda2sk?

paulb, you mentioned lobster shanty but i cant seem to find them, did you mean crab shanty? also which rest. did you go to when you saw them?

thanks!

 

[Paul B]

Ralphie, it is "The Lobster Box" and "PJs" restaurants. Try PJ's first. You may have to go to the bar and order a drink or something I am not sure because you have to walk through the restaurant to get to the docks. As I said the sponges are very small now. You can probably drive around City Island and find more floating docks but those are the only restaurants I go to by boat there. To get there by car you go to the Island and as soon as you get over the bridge you make a sharp left. Those two restaurants are the first ones you will come to. They are only maybe a hundred yards from the bridge.
Good luck, and don't forget I told you the sponges are still very small.
Paul

 

[ralphie16]

What a coincidence. I left before you posted and thats the only place on City Island I found that did not kick me off!

Had a nice lobster dinner there and then went out to the docks.

I looked up and down every single dock they had and the only thing I found that remotely resembled your description was this stuff:



It is very mucousy, dark red/brown, and came in sizes ranging from 1/8" to 1". It was very squishy feeling and even though I have never seen a sea aquirt, I would guess these would be those but im crossing my fingers hoping when you see these pics they are the sponges you are talking about.

 

[Paul B]

Glad you had a lobster dinner. Which restaurant did you go to?
Sea squirts are also very common but they are kind of clear loking and have the shape of a small sack about 4/3". Sopnge is reddish brown and squishy. This time of the year it is mostly just a thin covering against the wood. They are not ready yet.
As I kind of mentioned. It will take another month. I will let you know when they are ready.
Paul

 

[ralphie16]

The moorish idol is starting to nip at my anthron puffer. Every couple of minutes it will go up to the 4" puffer and nip at its tail or face. What a dck! Did your show any signs of aggression? Im thinking about putting it with my more aggressive tank at this point.

 

[ralphie16]

I ate at the Lobster House.

Here are the pics. Hmmm anyone hungry?

Are they sea squirts or sponges or just some random nasty crap I found?

Here's them swimming & nipping. (Three fish in a 125 gallon tank)

Here's the nip and the puffer flaring around all ****ed.

 

[Paul B]

Very hard to tell from the picture but the sponge is the same color. It looks like sea squirts with some sponge mixed in. Can you seperate out the squirts? They are like little grapes that squirt if you squeeze them The rest of the stuff looks like sponge.
Paul

 

[ralphie16]

I think they are all the same thing. Some of the bigger ones had little hairs at the top. Can I shoot you an email so you can see the pictures fully zoomed up and at full size instead of these micro pictures I posted? If so whats your email?

Would you feed them sea squirts or are those garbage?

 

[ATJ]

They come from shallow water all over the South Pacific.
Many will not eat at all and I believe that is because they live in mated pairs (they don't school as adults) the male leads the female to food, when she gets there, he leaves. (nice guy)

I'm just back from a week's diving on the Great Barrier Reef and the Coral Sea and made some careful observations of moorish idols while I was diving.

I saw them at all depths from near the surface to right down to 30 metres (100 feet). I saw them as singles as well as in groups of 2 or three. Those I saw as "pairs" (there was no way to tell if they were mated pairs or not), I saw both individuals feeding with no sign of one individual leading the other to food nor only one feeding.

Idols on their own didn't appear to behave any differently to those that were in "pairs" or groups of three and had no trouble finding food and feeding.

I was not able to reliable discern on what they were feeding, but it could have been sponge.

 

[Paul B]

ATJ good to hear from you. My first dives were off Sydney in about 1970. I went there on R&R. The Opera house was still under construction.
As to the Idols I also obviousely see them in deeper water, (I only went to 150' in the South Pacific). I ment that I see more of them in shallow water than deep water. (In Tahiti anyway)
While snorkling there Idols were one of the more common fish but as you get deeper there are less of them. They really stand out in shallow water because they are fairly large for shallow water. I also saw Idols alone and in groups of three but it seems that most of them were in pairs and they behaved like mated pairs to me anyway. I followed many "pairs" around the reefs and I often just laid on the bottom and waited for them to return on these wide loops. Of course as I did say in my early observation that this was in no way a scientific evaluation, You would need more than a few weeks of diving with them to come to any reliable hypothesis. I did however find that they were eating sponges, it looked like sponge anyway as it was lime green sticky stuff that I could not identify any other way. It was hard to collect because they cleaned it off the rocks fairly well.
Take care and have a great day.
Paul
By the way, I loved Sydney

 

[mojoreason]

i read aquarists can almost never keep moorish idols for long due to their dietary requirements ... and there never being enough in your tank system to suffice.

my $.02

 

[mojoreason]

not to mention their depletion in the wild.

 

[ATJ]

Paul,

You are correct in suggesting that it is unwise to make conclusions from only a few observations. Any observations are good and valuable, but you need a huge number to be statistically significant.

Kuiter and Debelius (2001) claim "Commonly seen in pairs, occasionally forming large travelling schools." and they include a couple of photographs of these schools from different locations. Are these rare observations and so are exceptions, or do we include them in the behaviour of the animal? Neither you or I have seen these schools so do we discount them?

Kuiter and Debelius also claim they eat a "diet of mixed algae and invertebrates such as sponges". Giving them sponges would be a good thing, but I would also recommend other invertebrate substitutes such as minced shrimp and mussels as well as some algal substitutes. Variety goes a long way to providing a balanced diet. A mate has had one (that was locally caught as a juvenile) for a couple of years now and as far as I am aware he does not include any sponge in the diet.

 

[ATJ]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10104944#post10104944 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mojoreason
i read aquarists can almost never keep moorish idols for long due to their dietary requirements ... and there never being enough in your tank system to suffice.

my $.02

This is true for ALL wild caught fish, regardless of the species. The key to the success for any fish (or invertebrate) is finding suitable substitutes for their natural food as their natural food will rarely, if ever, be present in an aquarium. It just happens that suitable substitutes are available for a large number of common species - although people can still fail to meet the needs of even some more common fish such as by feeding them with inappropriate foods or feeding them too infrequently.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10104949#post10104949 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mojoreason
not to mention their depletion in the wild.

Again, this is potentially true for all wild caught species and applies somewhat to even captive bred ones (because their food is wild collected).

If you genuinely believe that depletion of wild stocks is a problem for moorish idols, it will be a problem for all other species and so you'd be best not having an aquarium at all.

 

[Paul B]

ATJ, good point, I myself have never seen more then three of them at a time. I have heard that juviniles school but I have never seen that either. Then again, I diden't see any juviniles either so I can't comment on that.
As for feeding sponge, I am sure it is not a requirment but since I have seen them eat mostly sponge that is what I add to their diet. Of course I don't know how beneficial New York Sponge is for them but after five years mine seemed very healthy and I fed him sponge almost every day but it is true that any fish needs more than one type of food. I also fed nori, clams, squid, mussels, whole fish, bananas, avacado, plankton, mysis, live black worms, brine shrimp etc. His diet was also enriched with vitamin "A". My 100 gallon long tank was much too small for a 7" Idol but I had a problem and lost almost all of my fish including the Idol. I have no doubt that I would still have it if it were not for that problem and It seemed he would live out his normal lifespan of (I believe) ten years or more.
I have no scientific data pertaining to New York sponge as I have never before fed it to anythine else but after a while, almost all of my fish, including a copper banded butterfly ate it. It may have some nutritional advantage due to the "rich" qualities of northern water.
Paul

 

[Reefer Steve]

I've noticed they like to graze on coralline algae and other algae in peoples tanks. Sponge is also suppose to make up a large percent of their diet.
The ones at the Long Beach aquarium are so fat! I asked them what's there secret and the lady said they just feed chopped clam/squid and graze on the abundant brown algae.