The A. femininus whisperer: My working theory

[WayneL333]

Hi everyone,

I thought I'd post my working theory on how to get a femininus wrasse to thrive in a reef tank. I've tried a few costly times before and I never got them to survive long term. I provided them with a deep sand bed (my display tank has a 6" sand bed), plenty of live rock with pods, and a reef tank environment. I would see them eat and pick on the live rock and sand, and thought they were doing well since they were 'eating' but they'd disappear after a couple of weeks. And this is why I think they did. They starved to death.

You can tell this is how they eat in the wild. You can see their conspicuous front sharp protruding teeth and when they feed in my reef tank, I can hear a clicking noise so you know they have a strong bite. They hunt and pick on all the rock and sand and in the wild, there's plenty of fauna to support them. However in a reef tank, unless your tank is packed with pods, which most tanks have barely enough pods to support mandarin gobies, the femininus eventually starve to death.

So the way I found success this time around is by first, ordering from LA DD. I'm a huge fan of theirs and think they're prices are worth every penny. Not only because of their acclimation and conditioning protocols, but mostly because of their 2 week guarantee. Second, I kept my femininus in it's own QT tank that I have plumbed into my established shallow reef/FOWLR system. My QT tank is 50g and has about a 3" sand bed with plenty of rocks inside of it.

I found that you have to train and condition the femininus to eat dried or frozen food, which they will do eventually. But it takes time. The problem is that when most people release them into an establish reef tank the femininus can't compete with the other tank inhabitants in eating the prepared foods during feeding time. Hence they never learn how to eat the prepared food and continue to forage for food which ultimately can't sustain them. When you keep them in their own tank, I found that after about 5-7 days, they learn to take your prepared foods. I start off by defrosting mysis shrimp and injecting them into the water column via a baster. The femininus will see the food in the water column and will eventually start to eat it. Then after a few days of doing that, I'll just drop chunks of the frozen food and the femininus will eventually see the food floating on top and will start to feed on that. Finally after that, I'll mix some pellets with the frozen food and the femininus will start eating pellets. Now you've got them trained to feed on pellets. After a month of seeing them eating well and getting plump, I'll then release it into my display reef tank. It takes them a few days, but they'll get used to your feeding regimen in the reef tank and can compete with your other established fish during feeing time.

Anyway, I'm 2 for 2 now. I have one femininus is my reef tank for about a month now and it has previously has made it through a month of QT. Here's a video of it eating in my display reef tank (you can even kind of hear the clicking sound that they make when biting on the cube of frozen food):

From the water column:

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Holding its own with everyone else:

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As you can see, it eats voraciously with my other tank inhabitants. Even pellet foods too.

Here's my other femininus still in my QT tank:

I would have already moved to my reef tank but I actually just picked up these two bad boys yesterday!

I'm going to really put my theory to test. I put them into the same QT tank as I currently have the female in. I'm hoping the female will help condition and train these two new males. The female had already buried itself in the sand for the evening when I released them into the tank so I couldn't get a group shot but here are some pics of the males:

And the smaller of the two flashing it's body colors after seeing the larger male:

This is why I love the males so much. I love that they flash that mustard yellow body color. It's so cool!

Anyway, I thought I'd post my experiences. Please feel free to add your tips on how you got your femininus to live long term.

 

[WayneL333]

So I went to check up on them and the males were out!

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http://vid9.photobucket.com/albums/...7-2306-44AF-83AC-484F42AE8DAD_zpsm86xjswx.mp4

The big male looked good and even took a couple bites of food. The smaller male's snout was a bit pink/red. I think it damaged it yesterday when I released them into the QT tank. They both were kind of freaking out in the beginning. I also observed the larger male show a little aggression so I decided to move the smaller male into it's own tank. It's actually the refugium of my shallow reef. I hoping it'll heal and be less stressed in there alone. I was hoping they'd all get along so the female could help condition it, but I think it's best solo. Will update soon.

BTW, I think this technique can be applied to any fragile and delicate fish. I bought a pair of Maritius Jeweled Leopard Wrasses (you can see them in the video) from LA DD over a week ago and had them in the same QT tank. They just both popped out of the sand the last couple of days and are starting to eat well.

 

[euod]

Thanks.
What temp are you keeping them at? How long have you had the female? So the female is eating pellets? Size of pellets?
What time do these fish come out of the sand and retire for the night?

 

[WayneL333]

My tanks hovers at 75 and the chiller kicks on at 77. I've had the first female about 2 months, the second one a few weeks. I feed them the Spectrum small pellets.

I don't keep lights on my qt tank and they would wake up early, like before 6am and go to sleep early like before 3pm. However once I moved them over to my reef tank, they adjusted their awake hours to my lighting cycle. Well actually they were up before myights went on at noon and slept shortly after the final lights go off at 8:30p.

 

[RJT]

Excellent care of your fish. All of your rare fish look happy.

Your method would work with a lot of difficult fish. Thank you for sharing.

 

[nonimmigrant]

Wayne: are you running them thru a full treatment of General Cure whilst in QT? Kevin Kohen recommended it to me and it's my standard QT procedure for Anampses. Mine demolish NSL pellets, among other things, and are fed 4x a day. They are an awesome species; especially in groups. IME, I'd recommend even numbered groups. Best of luck!

 

[WayneL333]

Well my usually protocol is first TTM. I give them a diluted formalin bath for 45mins during each transfer (thanks to Karen's advice). Then I put them through a round of prazi.

However with these guys, I'm gonna make sure they're eating well first. Then I'll play it by ear. Honestly, I'm scared they're too fragile for prazi and other meds.

 

[nonimmigrant]

Well my usually protocol is first TTM. I give them a diluted formalin bath for 45mins during each transfer (thanks to Karen's advice). Then I put them through a round of prazi.

However with these guys, I'm gonna make sure they're eating well first. Then I'll play it by ear. Honestly, I'm scared they're too fragile for prazi and other meds.

Their travel time to u is certainly greater than to me here in China, but the GC on a three day dose works well when ure ready. As a side point, I eventually gave up my large male as he became rather aggressive (in a 350G). I have a group of females now that interact much better. One has looked as if she would transition into a male for a year now, but nothing yet. Enjoy them Wayne!

 

[Dmorty217]

Not to get off subject here but I love the 3 bandits you have in the tank, do you think they do best in odd numbers?

 

[acesq]

Good write up Wayne. My first femininus lasted only a few days in QT despite eating. Unfortunately, I did not purchase it from DD. My second (I soo wish I had purchased the first from DD!) has done much better but once I put her in the DT she stopped eating as aggressively. Fortunately I have tons of pods in the tank and between those and the food she does eat she has kept her weight but I am worried for her long term if she doesn't started eating more aggressively.

 

[scrambler1880]

Not a fish for the uninitiated... They don't ship well and absolutely need to be well fed to survive/thrive. I have had mine for a little over a year got her as a baby (she was smaller than my candy basslets at first) directly from the distributor. QT'd for 3 weeks during which time she was fully medicated (Prazo etc...) and trained to take frozen food AND pellets. We fed small amounts of a huge variety of food 6-10x a day in QT until she settled on a blend of sustainable aquatics 0.5mm pellets, enriched Hikari mysis, and cyclopeeze. I've since added the LRS food which she takes with great enthusiasm. Currently feeding 3-5x daily in a mature reef setting with two other wrasses and a mix of non-aggressive reef fish.

In hindsight I think that getting her young helped as we were able to train her to take prepared foods relatively fast (as a young fish she wasn't too set in her ways??). Also shipping an already healthy fish straight from the distributor likely minimized the chance of potential shipping injury. I picked her up at 3am from the airport distribution center an had the distributor send her off as late as possible the day before. Also thnk that medicating was a good idea though not sure if she ever needed it. Also really need to be careful that non of the other tank inhabitants outcompete them for food or show any aggression whatsoever. I moved my melanarus to my frag tank after he chased her a few times.

Very friendly and active fish definately my favorite.

 

[scrambler1880]

Her 'baby' picture (notice that the snail on the glass is bigger than she is) and one taken today next to a fuzzy shot of my terminal phase ornate wrasse for reference... she has almost doubled in size in about a year's time. Again my theory is that it was easier to train her to take pellets and frozen food because I got her young.

 

[acesq]

Great pictures. I agree that younger fish are generally easier to adapt to captivity. That said, I am happy to report that my 3" female is taking frozen much more aggressively! Given the right environment a healthy individual stands a good chance of adapting.

 

[scrambler1880]

Great pictures. I agree that younger fish are generally easier to adapt to captivity. That said, I am happy to report that my 3" female is taking frozen much more aggressively! Given the right environment a healthy individual stands a good chance of adapting.

Great news!! The right environment is of course the determining factor.. Also not sure what your experience is but I for one underestimated the frequency of feeding that was required early on just to get her interested. Sounds like yours is on the right track.

 

[Dmorty217]

Her 'baby' picture (notice that the snail on the glass is bigger than she is) and one taken today next to a fuzzy shot of my terminal phase ornate wrasse for reference... she has almost doubled in size in about a year's time. Again my theory is that it was easier to train her to take pellets and frozen food because I got her young.

What a picture! Can't believe how small she was

 

[WayneL333]

Hey everyone, so my two male and female femininus wrasses made it through QT, TTM, and Prazi. I completely stoked!!! I was worried about the Prazi, but they never lost their appetite at all. I had to separate the male femininus though. The larger male was pretty aggressive not only towards the smaller male but also towards the female. I'm going to keep the larger male in my FOWLR tank. But here's some pics of the new pair in my reef tank:

My other femininus was still sleeping under the sand. I'll try to take a pic of the trio when she wakes up later. I'm sure it'll be surprised to see the new pair!

One of the two Jeweled Leopard wrasses that made it through QT too. It was a lot more shy:

 

[HPark]

Wow - beautiful wrasses and tank - thanks for sharing!

 

[bobkill]

Amazing

 

[nonstopfishies]

Was just at DD over the weekend. They had a number of females and 2 full males that had just come in and were being qt'd. They treat these with extra care, setting up tanks in a quite office for them to get situated in. Amazing fish!

 

[WayneL333]

So I have a problem. For the last week or so, I had a suspicion that my original femininus was changing over to a male because it was flashing it's dark colors pretty frequently. In fact, I'd see it with darker colors more often than not. After I added the new pair yesterday morning, I was gone all say so I didn't see the trio at all together. Well today, after the lights came on I saw my original femininus chasing around the new male with full blown male colors. So my suspicions were correct. My original female is changing, if not already a full blown male.

Here are some pictures of I took her/him:

And the new female they're fighting over:

I tried to take a picture with all three, but it was nearly impossible since one male was constantly swimming away. Here's the best picture I could get of the trio:

I was able to shoot a quick video with my iphone though. The new male is the one freaking out on the right with the morphed female swimming on the bottom and to the left:

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