Orange Spot Filefish Success!
Orange Spot Filefish Success!
I've been lucky enough to have had an orange spot filefish for almost a year now and he's eating everything, but it took a LOT of work to get to this point. I started off with 3 and 2 just flat out never ate a thing. The smallest one was the winner and I feel like that's got something to do with it. Get them as small as possible. If you notice the file is "pacing" and picking at the glass at seemingly nothing, it won't live. It's too stressed out. It's all about the individual with these fish and if you are lucky, you'll get a good one that will work with you. The difference in personality between the the one that lived and the other two was really noticeably different. It's like he had no fear, almost like a child - whereas the bigger older ones just seemed freaked and out of their element. He was picking at branching SPS right off the bat too, whereas the others didn't touch a thing. Do not think you can drop these fish into a community aquarium and think they will be fine. You must start them in a tank by themselves to get them eating.
FEEDING: Be prepared for a challenge.
These guys are used to eating SPS polyps, along with little things that live on in the SPS all day long in the wild and don't even associate floating things in the water as food they can eat. This is key to understand.
Buy a medium sized chunk of pocillipora, and an 8" branching piece of acropora. This just added $100 to your cost if you weren't calculating. The pocillipora is used for the dinner table and the acropora is for sleeping quarters. If you give a sob story at the local fish store about how you need this big piece of acro as filefish food, they will give you a deal on it - it doesn't have to be anything nice - brown is cheap. You want the branches to be far enough apart so it will have options for sleeping in it (ridiculously cute). They use their barbs to secure themselves at night when the lights go out and they are VERY particular about sleeping in the same perfect spot. They also change color at night for camo which is pretty cool.
The strategy is, put things in the tank that they initially recognize as food (live pieces of SPS) and fake them out by jamming the actual food IN the pocillipora. This type of coral is good because the branches are tight and you can jam the food into it and it will stay there all day. Also, he seemed to pick at that type more anyway just by preference. The file should start picking at the SPS right off the bat. If he doesn't, sorry, but he's not going to live.
Buy Roggers Frozen Food (it's green). I can't stress this enough. It's the only thing i've been able to get them eating after trying seriously everything under the sun and doing multiple rain dances. Cut off a 2" chuck of roggers with a knife and jam it into the pocillipora somewhere so it doesn't move. Do this at the same time every day. The SPS probably won't live through this routine of frozen food being jammed into it so do some expectation setting at the door. Also, NO hermit crabs or shrimp in the tank. They end up competing for the food and dislodging the roggers chunk from the coral and it ends up down the drain or seriously ****ing off your filefish. As it picks normally at the SPS which it recognizes, it'll come across this new thing that's strange to him initially, but once he tries it, that's where the magic happens and you've got the coolest colored buddy for life.
They are quite personable and know what time food comes. When you see the food is gone out of the coral, add another piece. One a day is good - it gives them plenty of food all day long. He does this funny little dance when he knows he's going to be fed. They are signaling fish - meaning they morph their bodies in strange little ways to communicate and they will do that with you.
Once you've got them eating roggers from the pocillipora for a few weeks, get one of those little food clips with the suction cup and start putting the roggers in that to wean off the pocillipora. Once comfortable in their new home and have a routine, they'll start trying new things. Add cyclopeeze, mysis, brine routinely to get them tempted on floating things. It took about 6 months for him to start eating mysis. Cyclopeeze took about 3 weeks. He's now happily living with an orbic batfish in a pretty low flow tank. They get along great and pal around and he'll even eat frozen food out of my hand now. Batman and Robin. So cool!
BEST OF LUCK!
