Regarding the Orange Spotted File fish pictured above:
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I had my first pair in a 93 gallon cube mixed reef. They ate ova and sometimes Rogger’s food, however after 6 months one of them quickly lost weight, stopped eating and wasted away over a 2 week period. The second fish did the same thing after 9 months even though it continued to eat well. That was about 5 months ago.
I have since upgraded to a 210 gallon mixed reef and added significantly more sps corals to my collection. While I tried to resist the temptation to get another pair, I could not resist last week when Diver’s Den had a pair up for 4 or 5 days.
Before the fish even arrived I sought out additional Pocillopora frags/colonies as my first pair had always liked to snack on it.
When the new pair arrived they were in great shape and had more weight than my first pair had when they arrived. They were nipping sps in no time. Additionally they ate ova right away. After watching them for a week there are a few differences between this new pair versus my first pair that has me optimistic that this pair will fair better. First, the new pair has already accepted a wider variety of food - ova, cyclopeeze, sustainable aquatics hatchery diet pellets and mysis shrimp. The old pair really only ate ova on a regular basis. Second, the new pair both eat right out of the water column versus the old pair only picking food off the bottom. Third, I have a lot more sps that they may be able to snack on and if needed I can get a steady supply of pocillopora from the local reefing community.
