These are great fish. I've had dozens of them because I collect them here in NJ in late summer as tiny Gulf Stream strays, most less than an inch long. They are easy to feed, and quite hardy. They become an increasingly nervous fish as they grow larger, and they do grow very large. They have a tendency to take off in bursts of amazing speed and force when startled, bending their horns on the aquarium glass. Size is the biggest problem with these great fish.
There is a photo on my Public Profile of an especially beautiful Scrawled Cowfish that I collected in NJ. It was, when the pic was taken, about 15 months old. After another year had passed I donated it to a local public aquarium. It had gotten too large and too jumpy. You can see the slightly bent horns in the pic. There is another pic of an inch long Scrawled Cowfish on my Public Profile taken 4 months after I collected it from a dock piling in Barnegat Bay. It's sharing a tank with a newly caught Spotted Drum from Panama. The small Cowfish that drift up here on the Gulf Stream all die when the water gets cold in October.
