Quarantine Leopard Wrasse
- Thread starter Akrite
- Start date
curlykid
New member
yes they will become very stressed without sand. It doesn't have to be live sand, but it's important that they have a place to sleep, and go when they're scared. They are a very hard fish to keep, and i hope you're ready for it! I would buy from live-aquaria if i were you, sometimes fish like these are collected wrongly for a quick buck, but LA has their collector use nets instead of cyano-poisons. My lfs is the only place that orders from the same supplier, so i know their fish are A+. Remember to research all of the leopard wrasses to see which one will be best for you. Good Luck!
JSeymour
New member
Provide a tupperware container with some fine quartz sand for a place to sleep at night. This will allow you to easily clean up all the uneaten food you WILL have while training it to eat. Also, being a non-calcium based substrate, it won't interfer with any medications, should you need to use them.
aquaph8
Love The Fish
Nice thoughts. Sounds like a good idea.
MikeandNicole
New member
If you search through this forum there is a leopard wrasse primer. Most recommend not to quarantine them at all and add it straight to your DT. They can be very finicky eaters and if they are not trained on frozen food yet they will starve in your QT.
WI reefer55
New member
Leopards are very easy to keep hard to train
I got lucky and my mela was eating pellets at the store and is the hungriest fish in my tank
your prolly better of keeping in qt if he is still in there with a 2 to 3" sand bed yea yea yea sands not the best in a qt but with a burrowing fish you dont have much choice and it will be much less stressed in qt I would not keep moving it so if u did all rdy put it in your DT keep it there and get some brine shrimp and some frozen mysis and see how he does
I got lucky and my mela was eating pellets at the store and is the hungriest fish in my tank
your prolly better of keeping in qt if he is still in there with a 2 to 3" sand bed yea yea yea sands not the best in a qt but with a burrowing fish you dont have much choice and it will be much less stressed in qt I would not keep moving it so if u did all rdy put it in your DT keep it there and get some brine shrimp and some frozen mysis and see how he does
MechEng99
aka Reef'd Up
Leopard wrasses usually don't survive shipping and acclimation to tanks - they usually like to hide for several days. So, after sitting at the collection site (not eating), being shipped (not eating), finally arriving at the LFS (still not eating), then spending a few days in your tank (still not eating)...guess what...they don't survive well from that. If you can get them to not hide & eat...you're good to go.
I treated my splendid leopard wrasse (8+ months in captivity now) in hyposalinity so I could use sand for it. I highly recommend this as it'll provide a chance for you to observe the wrasse and try to get it to eat before it goes into your display tank and disappears...potentially forever. I used a very limited amount of sand, but it didn't seem to mind. Some days it would just bury its head. I also used a rock with a cave that was open on the bottom, so the wrasse would bury into the sand inside the little cave. Worst case, at least use a small piece of PVC - they'll sometimes use that to "bury" themselves, but I don't recommend that.
If you keep a leopard wrasse in captivity, they like to eat pretty much constantly (as mentioned above), so doing that in a QT can be tricky. I regularly hatched baby brine shrimp since they can live a while in low salinity. Pellet food works great, but watch out for dirty water/rising ammonia.
Also, the leopard wrasses like to sleep just about as much as I do, so don't be worried when he's buried around 8pm and doesn't come out until 10am or so. Turning the lights on and off regularly will help it adjust.
Summary - QT the wrasse in hyposalinity with sand and rocks/pvc. Use lights to get the wrasse to adjust, and feed a LOT (but watch your water quality.)
Hope that helps! (And this was just based on my own experience.)
I treated my splendid leopard wrasse (8+ months in captivity now) in hyposalinity so I could use sand for it. I highly recommend this as it'll provide a chance for you to observe the wrasse and try to get it to eat before it goes into your display tank and disappears...potentially forever. I used a very limited amount of sand, but it didn't seem to mind. Some days it would just bury its head. I also used a rock with a cave that was open on the bottom, so the wrasse would bury into the sand inside the little cave. Worst case, at least use a small piece of PVC - they'll sometimes use that to "bury" themselves, but I don't recommend that.
If you keep a leopard wrasse in captivity, they like to eat pretty much constantly (as mentioned above), so doing that in a QT can be tricky. I regularly hatched baby brine shrimp since they can live a while in low salinity. Pellet food works great, but watch out for dirty water/rising ammonia.
Also, the leopard wrasses like to sleep just about as much as I do, so don't be worried when he's buried around 8pm and doesn't come out until 10am or so. Turning the lights on and off regularly will help it adjust.
Summary - QT the wrasse in hyposalinity with sand and rocks/pvc. Use lights to get the wrasse to adjust, and feed a LOT (but watch your water quality.)
Hope that helps! (And this was just based on my own experience.)
