Philippine Ventralis Anthias

ThRoewer

New member
On July 27th, after seeing them for a couple of weeks at a local store, I decided to give Ventralis Anthias another shot. I picked 2 females, one was the dominant female in the tank, the other a smaller but particularly healthy looking specimen. I added these to the quarantine tank with the Assessor randalli pair I had aquired a week earlier.
Both did fine on the first day and started going after live Tigger Pods right away.
Unfortunately, around noon on the next day, I found the smaller of the two dead without any signs of disease or injury from fights.

Here a video of the surviver on the 4th day, feeding on Tigger Pods:

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On July 31st I got 3 additional females from another store, two nearly equal in size to the first, while the third was quite a bit smaller.
And like with the first 2, the smallest didn't see the end of the second day in the tank. Again, no obvious cause of death could be seen.
The remaining 3 were doing fine.

Here all 3 feeding on Tigger Pods a day after I got the second batch:

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Two days later:

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I noticed that they would come out more out to eat if the flow was off. In general, they would be extremely shy and reclusive when the pump was on but a bit more outgoing when the pump was off. This did however not impact their food intake and they all had always pretty full stomachs. I usually gave them a scoop of Tigger pods and brine shrimp in the morning and another when I came home from work.

I had noticed a similar reluctance to come out of cover with my Amphiprion percula pair #2 after I had moved them to a new tank of their own. They, however, became instantly more outgoing after I added a Starcki damsel to their tank. Seeing another fish out in the open obviously convinced them that it was safe to get a bit further from their anemone.
A week after the first 2 Ventralis I had bought a pair of wild Amphiprion ocellaris from the Philippines. Like most ocellaris I have had over the years they were pretty outgoing and not overly fearful. So, by the time those two were 5 weeks into their quarantine and seemingly clean I decided to move them over to the Anthias and Assessors so those would feel more comfortable to come out.
And it definitely worked:

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They go after frozen and even flakes but still prefer Tigger Pods over everything else. In the 6 weeks between the first video and this, the first female has grown significantly and I hope she will soon start to change into a male. She is certainly not shy anymore and the bully of the tank.

By now they are now one week shy of completing their quarantine period and it is time to decide where to put these guy.

I would love to put them into my 100-gallon reef tank but I'm not sure if it is safe for them to be in a tank with a large gigantea. That would pretty much also exclude my anemonefish system of six 40B tanks with pretty much a fish-eating carpet anemone (3 haddoni & at least 2 gigantea) in each tank.

Another possibility would be to put them in the subtropical tank with my 3 Blue Spot Jawfish. But first, winter temperatures as low as 18 °C for and summer temperatures as high as 30 °C may be way too extreme for the Anthias who like it more in the lower half of the 20s. Secondly, I also have some serious doubt that the BSJ with their darting in and out of their burrows during feedings are tankmates the Anthias would feel comfortable with.

The last option would be to set up a new 75-gallon tank for the whole Philippine gang: Anthias, Assessors, Ocellaris, and lastly my blue Regal, who really could need a bigger tank by now...
 
All 3 are still doing fine. The dominant female is by now twice the size of the smaller two.
I kind of feel these are quite different from the more common Anthias, especially in terms of feeding. These seem to be more inclined to scavenge rocks for pods and get by with one or two big meals a day instead of needing food constantly.
 
The dominant female is now in transition to male. It started changing coloration, though I don't see much change in behavior yet.
For nearly 2.5 months now I have been feeding these guys just one time per day frozen food (mysis). A few times I supplemented that with a second feeding of flakes. Despite this rather sparse feeding schedule for Anthias, all 3 are well nourished and have grown. During feedings they stuff themselves like groupers.
I think, while these guys look like the shallow water Anthias, their feeding needs are closer to that of other deep water Anthias like the Odontanthias.
In their territorial behavior they are also remarkably different from "normal" Anthias: each of the females has a fixed location/territory from where she looks for food and that she pretty much never leaves. Only the largest (which is now becoming a male) is visiting the smaller ones in their territories from time to time. It seems like each female has her own territory within the larger territory of the male.

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I've been following your thread. I introduced some Ventralis females and they weren't surviving. I got a male from a different source then shortly after got 3 females. I have one loan female survivor from the first source plus 3 of the other females and male. The one female from the first batch I got doesn't always hang out with the others but she's doing good along with the other 3 females and one male. I feed about 5 times a day and they all have grown. The male is a nice size so beautiful. I've had them for six months. The tanks temperature is 78°.
 
Time for an update:
The largest female has finished her transformation and is now a male. He and the next largest female hang out together a lot while the smallest female keeps most of the time to herself. I've seen the male making rapid approaches to the females, but it looks more like mating behavior than attacks, and nobody has even the slightest fin damage. So it seems that they are getting along fine so far.
I got to see that I clean the front glass and take a video of them.

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Finally got around to shoot some videos of my Ventralis.

The (now) male has almost doubled in length while the smallest has barely grown at all. The larger female falls right in the middle of this.
The male and the larger female hang out together all the time and occupy the same cave. While I have not seen any bullying or aggression it seems the smallest is somewhat excluded from their twosomenes. And while the larger two seem well nourished, the smallest seems a bit skinny to me which is why I have upped the feedings a bit and plan to install an Eheim feeder on their tank.

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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/49OlYa8dK7Q" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
They look great!:thumbsup:

Are they eating more of the standard foods now?

What's current temps your keeping now?
 
They take flakes just as well as frozen food or Tigger Pods.
I haven't checked the temperature lately but would it should be around 24°C.

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Looks like the smallest of the 3 is gone as I have not seen her in a couple of days. I kinda hope she went through the overflow into the caulerpa jungle tank below like last time she went missing, but there is also the possibility that she has become dinner for the male of the Plesiops corallicola pair. Those guys have grown a lot since I put them separate from the Marine Bettas.

The remaining Ventralis male and female hang out together in the same cave all the time. The little one was kind of the outcast of the trio.

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